Modern Love
by ithinkyourewonderful
Summary: A widowed Doctor, a questioning nun, both devoted to their jobs serving in East London's St. Nonnatus hospital develop a tentative friendship, and then possibly more. A modern/au retelling of Patrick/Sister Bernadette's love story.
1. Modern Love

**AN:** I am fully aware this isn't now nursing, hospitals, hierarchy work — that said, for the purposes of this, let us imagine that it is. Suspension of disbelief and all that jazz.

No beta, all mistakes are mine. But if you enjoyed it, hated it, or had any feeling related to it outside of ambivalence, feel free to share a review. 

* * *

Friday nights had their own energy in the east end of London. The air was electric - alive with promises of excitement and adventure and possibility.

Most of the people were just getting off work were ready to spend what money they had on celebrating and enjoying life, even if only for the night while the others were settling in for a long night of work. The men and women of St. Nonnatus Hospital weren't much different, those who had finished their day shifts were just now making it into the locker rooms to strip out of their scrubs and head out into the night, while those coming in for the night shift were settling in for the usual Friday bedlam. Like many jobs where the hours were long, the work stressful, the pay low - situations forged casual relationships into long-lasting friendships. It was here at Nonnatus where men and women from every walk of life met in some way, shape or form and it was during these rare changeover times that allowed the staff to see each other during their monthly rotations. These moments, despite occurring twice a day (with no disrespect to the swing shifts, always forgotten, neither here nor there), were moments of great celebration during the solemnity of their shifts. They would spend the few moments of togetherness catching up with one another's lives, or making plans, borrowing perfume or a hair tie - and the occasional phone blasting out the latest song as the lucky ones who were on their way out got themselves ready.

Ever quiet amongst the cacophony of noise in the women's locker rooms was Sister Bernadette - it wasn't to say she didn't approve of the goings on, more that she was forever a witness to them, an observer to these women, most of whom were the same age but so vastly different. For their parts, the other laywomen of the hospital knew the sisters preferred to keep to themselves, and so would limit their non-professional interactions with them out of respect to their chosen vocations. So in instances like tonight, where the women burst out singing, loud and off tempo as they tried to keep time with the flow of the melody, they would only look past her, as if she were only half-there. She knew she should join her fellow sisters in the second floor room, so much more quiet, more private, but there was always this energy here that made her smile shyly, made her ache.

St. Nonnatus hospital was built in the infancy of the NHS as a shining beacon of modernity to help the poorest of London's poor sixty some odd years ago, and now stood as a relic, the last of dying breed, but still serving the poorest of London's poor. There was nothing to be done, repairs and patching and prayer were all that was holding this building together after decades of use and abuse. It wasn't neglect, for the Anglican order dedicated to the St. Raymond Nonnatus, removed from his dying mother's womb, had spent the whole of their energies and efforts in maintaining the hospital as best as they could. It was just that the building was so hopelessly overrun and undervalued that every other hospital came first in terms of funding, of supplies, of staffing. That said, St. Nonnatus tended to draw a particular kind of staff member, only the most dedicated to their profession, to learning all they could, to serving as many as they could. Most of their staff sought out their roles here, knowing that the practical education that they would receive here would be invaluable. Those at Nonnatus learned quickly because they didn't have the luxury of time, of additional staffing. If something needed to be done, they did it and if they didn't know how, they learned it, and quick. The ship was run by Chief of Staff Sister Julienne, a woman who parlayed her earlier days as a nurse and her devotion to others into a career as caretaker and guardian to the building and community and a mentor to those who worked with her. At her right hand sat the young Sister Bernadette, who kept her in touch with the soul and the spirit of the staff, religious and layperson alike. At her left sat Doctor Turner as the Chief of Surgery, a confidant and a friend who took on as much as he could and more, especially for a man in his position.

With a quick glance in the mirror to ensure her hair was appropriately covered by the surgical cap, Sister Bernadette slips out of the change room quietly, leaving the women to try to keep pace with the rapper playing on their phone. This is the calm before the storm. She closes her eyes and takes a breath to steady herself before making her way to the board, taking any available opportunity to reflect and offer thanks, knowing as it's Friday, she'll likely not make it to compline in the chapel where the working sisters perform their daily prayers. She completes her moment and looks about the nursing station in the neonatal ward, updating the boards with the name of the night nurses and doctors, reviewing notes. "Sister Bernadette, I had rather hoped to talk to you downstairs, but you slipped out!" Nurse Trixie Franklin exclaims, she stands before her, all curled blonde hair and bright red lipstick, a starlet in scrubs. "Can you let Dr. Turner know it's very important I speak to him when he comes in? I've sent a text, but you know that man." Except she doesn't, not at all, outside of the bare facts. "I'm in A&E all night and will relish the chance to see someone not about to be sick down my front." She beams at other woman before turning on her heel and making her way to the A&E ward. Sister Bernadette offers up a silent thanks that Trixie is downstairs for the night - she's a brilliant nurse, full of passion and energy and curiosity - but nights on the neonatal floor are a quiet affair and she finds keeping up with Trixie's dialogue more exhausting than a double shift.

The handful of the nurses trickle up and quietly they begin their work for the night.

* * *

"Sister, have you seen Dr. Turner?" The soft voice of Nurse Cynthia Miller breaks through her focus on the documents before her.  
"Sorry, I haven't. Anything wrong?"  
"No, not yet, I just wanted to see if he can stop by little Noah and take a look. His fever is coming down, but there's still some other lingering issues that look like they aren't improving as they should."  
"When I see him, I'll pass the message along."  
"Thanks, anything interesting?" She asks, indicating to papers before Sister Bernadette.  
"Depends what you find interesting," She laughs softly, "Fact checking Sister Julienne's speech for her next fundraising event."  
"I don't know how she does it, but I am glad she does. Having you must be a great help." Cynthia smiles before grabbing another set of patient records and returning to work.

Sister Bernadette turns her eyes back down at the pages spread out before her, trying not to think about how often she now hid behind a wan smile, how heavy those words, well-meaning as they were, made her feel. Where she had once loved these night shifts - so much time to think and pray and work - uninterrupted by the world outside but now she has come to dread them, seeing only the darkness in her thoughts and her soul reflected in the world outside of herself. No, it wouldn't do to dwell on these thoughts, she reminds herself, shaking her head out of the dark clouds that hung around her. She picks up her pen and begins to lose herself in the the elegant script of Sister Julienne's writing, who after all these years still insisted on drafting her thoughts with pen and paper. She's so engrossed in her work that she nearly misses the clear chime of the lift signal and the silent rush of wind from the doors sliding opening, revealing a sheepish Dr. Turner and a child sized bundle in his arms. He makes his way to the nurses station, "The sitter canceled," He shrugs, offering in ways of a quiet apology, flashing a half grin she can't help but return. "Everything alright here Sister? Holding down the fort?"

"Oh, we're fine." She comes out from behind the nurses station to greet them both. "Hello Timothy, you're up awfully late."  
"I was sleeping until dad made me get up." He mumbles, nestling deeper into the crook of his father's neck.  
"In the car Tim. I wasn't about to leave you in the parking lot."  
"But I was sleeping!"  
"And you can sleep in my office."  
"Oh, Doctor!" Cynthia rounds the corner, catching sight of the three of them. "Did Sister Bernadette tell you about Noah?"  
"No, no, I just arrived. Is he worse?"  
"Come here Timothy," Sister Bernadette softly speaks, taking the small boy into her arms from his father, freeing him to see his patients. "Let's get you settled, shall we?"  
"Hmmmmmm." He murmurs, cuddling closer to her. "Your new glasses are pretty."  
"Are they?"  
"Yes, but they're awfully pokey."  
"I'm sorry." She laughs.  
"I'll be in to check on you in a bit Tim."  
"Good night dad."  
"Good night Tim. Sister, thank you." Dr. Turner he smiles apologetically to both woman and child, placing a hand on her arm for a moment before turning his attention to Nurse Miller.

It's not until much later that night, back at the nurses station, where they're reviewing patient notes side-by-side with with the Doctor does he turn to her, "He's right you know, Tim. Your new glasses really are rather pretty on you." For a brief moment, Sister Bernadette blushes and looks down. She feels wholly confused, but for the first time in a very long time, she doesn't feel half-invisible.

 **TBC.**


	2. Where Does the Good Go?

**AN:** If you get the show they're talking about, then you get the title... and if not, the title should still make sense.

I rewatched series 2 recently and was struck by how few Dr. Turner's interactions were with Sister Bernadette - what little they had were all broad but so specific. Hopefully I can hint at the same beats without mimicking them completely. 

* * *

"Jenny Lee - are you still in last night's clothes?!" Trixie Franklin teases loud enough for the changing room filled for the morning shift to hear and erupt in jeers and claps and laughs. "I am afraid I don't know what you mean Trixie!" Jenny huffs, shedding her clothes as quickly as she can.  
"And are you saying you don't know what I mean if I mention you've got a little love bite right there?" Trixie points to the side of her neck. If possible, the room erupts into louder laughter.  
"Don't worry, Jen, I've some concealer that'll fix that right up." Chummy offers, using her sizeable height to block the woman from some of the unwanted attention.  
"Thanks Chummy." She mumbles, blushing red.  
"Don't worry, this is still nothing compared to the ribbing I once got at school. They hung pregnancy tests from my locker and called me Chummy the Mummy for the year."  
"That doesn't sound like ribbing Chum." Trixie interrupts, "That just sounds like outright cruelty."  
"And you would know." Jenny sticks her tongue out at the blonde nurse as she slips into her scrubs.  
"We're your friends Jen. We're just happy for you that the drought's over. If not for your sake, then for our purely selfish reasons. Two years of celibacy really is, well…" She searches for the right analogy for something so horrifying.  
"Two years too long?" Dr. Mount offers from the other side of the room.  
"Yes. Can you imagine?"  
"It's not exactly a fate worse than death, Nurse Franklin." Sister Bernadette offers, fighting the smirk that's spreading across her face. "Some of us have been known to survive."  
"Thank you, Sister." Jenny offers, thankful for the support.  
"That said, on behalf of your co-workers and your patients, we're all very happy for the end of the end of your hardship." She teases, ducking to avoid the shirt Jenny launched firmly at her.  
"Sister Bernadette's got jokes!" One of the nurses teases.  
"Does she now?" Sister Evangelina barks, eyeing her sister as she enters the room to interrupt the cheer in the room. "Love to hear them some time Sister. Those of you starting morning shift, be quick about it, patients are waiting out there. Those of you who have finished, decent job, you've all earned your rest." She starts to leave the room before turning around again, "And Nurse Brown, please put your police escort out of his misery. He's been pacing outside waiting for you for the last 30 minutes."

And with that, the room erupts in another round of cheers.

Sister Bernadette uses the cover of this new round of hazing to escape the change room and slip into the hall where indeed there was a slight but sweet looking policeman who had the familiar look of being up all night, carrying two cups of coffee. He looks up at her, briefly and with hope in his eyes before smiling politely and continuing to pace around. It was quite obvious he had eyes for only one woman. A feeling, unnamed and unknown fills her with emptiness for a moment and when she turns away from it, she lands squarely against Dr. Turner who's arms instantly go out to steady her "Oooh - Sister, sorry, I didn't see you."

"I'm sorry Doctor, I should pay attention where I'm going."

They stand there for what feels like a moment, but could've only been a matter of seconds, before Sister Evangelina interrupts them, "Dr. Turner, if you're done bulldozing the nurses, may I speak to Sister Bernadette for a moment?"  
"Ah, yes. I'm sorry." He smiles at her before dropping his arms, "See you in surgery, Sister."  
"Sister, I feel I need to talk to you in regards to your insistence on changing with the nurses," Sister Evangelina begins, pulling her out of her joyful mood, pleased to be on the surgery rotation, to have had a moment with the other nurses where she was one of them, not separate. "I know you say it's because you don't want them to feel as if we are different then they are, but we are. When you're making jokes on what I suspect are inappropriate topics, it will only confuse them in terms of who we are and what we stand for. Remember that - remember what you are, Sister Bernadette and who you are."

It's these very words that linger in her mind now and for the rest of the rest of the day. Who is she, and more importantly, what is she? A woman in her early 30s. With a sense of humour and compassion. Equal parts shy and bold. A woman. A nurse. A nun. Was this all that she boiled down to? A handful of generic qualifiers, most of which would apply to every other woman in the building and in the city?

She stops her thoughts, earmarking them for a time when she has for indulgences like this. Now is not the time - with an hour before the surgery to review the case notes - it's not a luxury they have often and she will take advantage of it. Omphalocele repair on 2 week old Julie Walker (she offers a silent prayer). While not an inconsequential surgery, it is, nonetheless, one with some odds. Feeling ready, she dons her gown, scrubs up and enters the surgery where she's cheerfully greeted by Trixie Franklin preparing their OR, "Hello Sister!"  
"Nurse Franklin - new rotation for you?"  
"Yes, Dr. Turner is aiding my escape from A&E, fantastic, isn't it? I hope you don't mind, I was eager to-" She continues talking but Sister Bernadette pauses to take a deep breath, to examine the sudden twist of pain somewhere between her belly and her lungs. She breathes it out. She lets Trixie continue to talk as together they continue their tasks, getting the room and their tools ready.

Soon conversation fills the room as Dr. Turner walks in with Dr. Busby, the new anaesthesiologist from St. John's. Formal introductions are made, but it's clear everyone knows each other outside of Sister Bernadette, though the connection seems loose and vague. The doctors review their own stations before discussing the challenges - with patients so young and so vulnerable, the challenges are almost too many, but Dr. Turner seems to trust Dr, Busby and that will have to be enough. It's this moment before the arrival of the patient that she finds the most nerve wracking, where you're free to think of everything that could go wrong, that should and would go wrong. It's this moment where prayer never seems to be enough to push the dread out of her body or her mind. Once surgery began, those thoughts tended to evaporate, but here in the calm of the room, with the quiet rush of clean air being pushed in, the hum of the lights, where the energy hovered like low level clouds - "I know!" Dr. Turner remarks, clapping his hands together sharply, "Music - that's what we've forgotten. What do you say to Nurses' choice for this one?" He smiles towards them as Trixie rushes to the station, already pressing buttons on the device before Sister Bernadette can say anything. "If it's alright, I took the liberty - Jenny Lee had told me that Sister, you can't really listen and Dr. Turner never cares…" She tries not to wince at the harshness of the words, it's not that she can't so much as she shouldn't… She notices another sad sort of half-smile offered up in her general direction and she shrugs. She can hear the roll of the cart down the hall and she goes to stand by the door, watching for their patient. Eventually baby Walker arrives, escorted by the orderly and Nurse Miller, who runs a light finger down baby Walker's face before Sister Bernadette gingerly picks their patient up and brings her to the room.

"Hello little one." Dr. Turner whispers as an introduction, watching The Sister cradle her. "Hello friend!" Dr. Busby greets their patient cheerfully, her hands gentle as she makes final adjustments to her equipment as Sister Bernadette and Trixie hold down their patient and then lowers the plunger releasing the first of the anaesthesia.

And with that, the surgery itself begins.

Omphalocele repair is corrective surgery to repair birth defects in the abdomen wall which allowed parts of the liver and small & large intestines to be exposed. The work, like all of theirs, is delicate, requiring skill and a light touch. It requires the surgical team to work as one cohesive unit - it is unkind, Sister Bernadette knows, but she is constantly surprised by the transformation of Trixie between the jovial, brash person she is outside and the serious, skilled nurse she is for her patients. Perhaps that's what Dr. Turner saw in her when he helped her shift her rotations from A&E to surgical?

They work quickly, efficiently, as they graft and patch baby Walker's belly. It's not until they near the end, where they begin ending the procedure does the tension disperse to something more buoyant, more joyful. When surrounded by death - it's all they can do to find the light. Perhaps it's this lighter mood that has overtaken the room as Dr. Busby begins to mumble along to the music, the words hidden by her accent and her surgical mask "Sorry," She mumbles, catching herself sheepishly, "It's just one of those song, you know?"  
"I know, I can't hear it without thinking of Yang leaving, you know?" Trixie asks as she takes the tools from Dr. Turner's hands, leaving Sister Bernadette to dress the wound.  
"Spoilers!" He chastises, his eyes clearly smiling over his surgical mask. "Some of us are still on series eight."  
"I feel like the spoilers rule is null and void after oh, three years." Dr. Busby chimes in as she strips off her gloves.  
"Yes, well, life somehow gets in the way. It feels wrong to watch without Sarah." He steps back and removes his own gloves, watching Sister Bernadette's hands as she finishes her careful dressing of the wounds. "I used to give her such grief about it…Anyways, good job everyone - I think we have a truly cracker team here. Nurse Franklin, I hope you won't be opposed to more shifts with us."  
"On the contrary Doctor. I'd love it."  
"Excellent, excellent! Well, I'm going to grab a cup of lukewarm tea and begin my rounds. Ladies!" He nods towards them, and gently taps baby Walker's hand with his before leaving the OR.

They all split up from the OR. It's a quiet surgical day for neonatal, so Trixie is returned to A&E happier than she's been in a while, with Sister Bernadette and Dr. Turner doing their rounds and routines. They continue their day until it's time to retire to the change room that night, where the mood is quieter, it's mid-week, and exhaustion is high amongst the staff. In the quiet, Sister Bernadette can hear chatter on the other side of the locker:  
"So Sarah's his wife? Did she leave?"  
"No, she died. Three years ago? From what I heard though, she was sick for so long before that."  
"Oh, how awful - just him and his son?"  
"Isn't it just? I don't know how he does it, I mean, he does the best he can but still…You can tell they're lacking a woman's touch. Mismatched socks, mis-buttoned shirts, and those clothes… I've half the nerve to offer to take him shopping myself, especially if it gets me out of A&E."  
"Ugh - don't mention that to Pats, she keeps suggesting we go shopping for new clothes for me… I suspect she's doing the same"

There's the matching slam of locker doors and the conversation moves away so she can't hear. It doesn't mean she can't feel her heart racing and her cheeks redden at the thought of anyone speaking so…no, not unkindly, but so casually of a man as good and as devoted as Dr. Turner. She hurriedly changes out of her scrubs and into her lay clothes. She'll have to hurry if she's to get back in time for Compline.

Perhaps tomorrow she will heed her fellow Sister's guidance and begin changing with the other Sisters.


	3. Exist Outside This Place

It's never easy for a doctor when their patient dies, nor the nurses for that matter. Each of them has their own way of dealing with and processing it. Some separate themselves before walking into the surgical room to keep from feeling anything, some run away from it, literally on a treadmill or the streets after their shift, or figuratively with a vice. It didn't matter what the vice - drink, drug, sex, or, in the case of Dr. Turner, cigarettes.

He knew, he knew he shouldn't smoke. He wouldn't consider himself a smoker, not anymore, but in the top drawer of his desk, all the way in the very, very back lay a pack of Benson & Hedges and his father's old lighter. After the surgery was over, the family notified, the forms filled out, the routines and rules completed, he found himself at the end of his shift grabbing the cigarette pack and running up the service stairs two at a time to the roof, feeling he would burst from his skin if he didn't get outside soon enough. He burst through the door, out of breath, startling himself at the loud clanging of door hitting the wall. He didn't care, he just bent over and sucked in lungfuls of cold air until his heart slowed and he could hear his thoughts again. By the time he straightens himself up, he notices a slight and familiar figure in the dark watching him. How should he know her silhouette in the dark, apart from all the other silhouettes, he wonders to himself.

They spend a moment, looking at one another, but unable to see each other from the darkness.

"It's so hard when they're so tiny, isn't it Doctor?" She asks, her voice soft, her accent heavy.  
"It wasn't supposed to be a difficult surgery." He offers back, as if to apologise to her, to everyone.  
"We never know what will happen, Doctor. You of all people should know that." She turns around, presumably to return her gaze to the handful of stars over London… "It's dark enough and clear enough to see them, you know, the stars." He walks towards her, tipping his cigarette pack open, taking the last one out and pausing before lighting it. "Suppose I should offer it to you, Sister?"  
"Thank you, no." She smiles conspiratorially, watching him light it, "I quit when I was fourteen."  
"You dark horse you." He teases.  
"Thank you, Doctor." She begins, holding on to the railings, "You always offer, you never assume anything because…"  
"Because you're a nun?" He chuckles, trying to brush it off. "Call it good manners instilled by a healthy fear of my grandmother."  
"Still, it… it means a great deal to me." She looks at him for a moment, or the glowing tip of his cigarette, then back out to London.  
"It doesn't get easier, no matter how old they are." He returns to her earlier question, leaning his arms our on the railing. He takes a drag of the cigarette then holds it out to her.  
"No, I suppose it doesn't."  
"I won't tell if you don't."

She gently takes the cigarette from his hands, careful not to touch, then brings it up to her lips awkwardly, out of practice. What a strange sight this was, his Sister Bernadette, smoking from his cigarette. She closes her eyes with a second drag and holds it for a moment before screwing up her face and releasing it in a near perfect smoke ring. He watches as she turns her eyes, beaming with excitement to him.

"Well done Sister. I may need you to teach me that trick." She returns his cigarette to him, again careful not to touch. He finds that funny, sharing a smoke was always a fairly intimate thing, mouths practically touching and all that, but here she was, careful not to touch his hand. He tries to recall if she does that during surgery, but finds he can't remember. "It reminds me of being young."  
"You're still young, aren't you, Sister Bernadette?" He looks at her, really looks at her. With her hair tucked under her surgical cap, and her eyes shining, her cheeks red, she looks so incredibly youthful he finds it difficult to think of her as anything but a child still, even knowing that she's not. "You're younger than I am anyways." He turns away, back to London. He can't think of why, but it suddenly hurts.  
"I think we've both had to grow up much more than others know." She states matter of factly.

They continue like this, side by side, him smoking and her taking in deep lungfuls of it as they watch the sky turn from black to dark blue.

"May I ask you something, Sister?" He turns around, leaning on the railing now, looking back at her, at the door behind her.  
"You can ask anything Doctor Turner, just as I can choose not to answer."  
"Fair enough." He tips his pack out for another cigarette, but comes up empty, shrugs. "What music did you listen to, when you did, I mean? What did 14 year old Sister Bernadette listen to when she was smoking out back behind the school?" He doesn't know why he asked that, it just seemed like a question to ask, safer than all the other ones he had running in his mind.  
"You make me sound like a delinquent!" She laughs, then blushes. "I was simply, curious was all."  
"Semantics." He shrugs.  
"What did you listen to?" She turns the question back to him.  
"Oh, I don't know, I've always had rubbish taste in music. But you…I've long suspected you're a bit of a musicophile… I've seen you when someone puts on something awful in surgery. I'll even confess this to you, but I've caught you humming every now and then - yes." He watches her cringe slightly. "I've even heard you sing once or twice at, you know, prayers or what have you."  
"Prayers or what have you?" She laughs.  
"Yes, well… I never said I was anything other than the godless heathen that I am." He shrugs, making a joke of it before turning back around to face the city, away from her. He doesn't know why, but it feels wrong admitting that to her. Not because she's a nun, or, not just because she's a nun. "It's at times like this where I wish I had some of your faith."  
"It's at times like this I wish it made a difference." She offers back.

It seems she is not the only one struggling tonight.


	4. Here's What I'll Do, I'll Take Care Of

She shouldn't, she knew she shouldn't.

She also knew she would. Somewhere deep, deep down, was the stubborn spirit that had served and guarded her well throughout her years. She takes a deep breath and sets her eyes squarely on the door to Dr. Turner's office and walks straight towards it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And why wouldn't it be? They were colleagues, weren't they? Those in devotional life often strove to bridge the distances between others and themselves, to be one of the people instead of removed - and part of that was small acts like this, wasn't it? And who was to say the paper in her hand wasn't a very important patient file that she was delivering?

She knows she's rationalizing, and if she's rationalizing, then there must be something wrong with what she's doing. Except she can't quite place what it is that makes her feel guilty, that is making every inch of her body scream out and her heart to pound so loud she half-expected the nurses to sing along to it while changing.

She knocks on the door swiftly, knowing he's on rounds and won't be in, so she's entirely surprised to hear a firm but distinctly un-Dr. Turner voice biding her to come in. She opens the door slightly and peeks her head in, catching sight of young Timothy sitting at his father's desk, papers and homework spread out around him. "Oh, hello Timothy."

"Hello Sister Bernadette." He pauses from his work at hand to look up to her. "Dad's not in as you can see. I think he's on his rounds. Can I help you with something?"  
"Well thank you for the offer, but I think not." She slides the note into one of her pockets. "A holiday from school?"  
"Yes Sister." His head is bowed in concentration, a trait that has passed from father to son.  
"What are you working on? It seems very serious." He shrugs the shrug of someone pretending to be disinterested and mumbles something as he picks up something from his father's desk and set's back to work. "What was that? I didn't quite hear." She asks, slipping into the room.  
"Just uh, homework, you know. Family tree and all that."  
"Ah, I see." The forced coolness making a little more sense. "Don't you think you should use a pair of scissors to cut that photo instead of one of your father's scalpels?"  
"This gets it closer to the -" Before he can finish he drops it with a yelp.  
"Tim, are you alright?" She's over kneeling by his side before the words come out of her mouth. "Let me see."  
"I'm fine." He protests, holding his hand above his heart, applying pressure.  
"I'm sure you are, your first aid is already as good as some of the nurses here. Though I shouldn't have expected less." She smiles, "Please let me see?" She watches him and her heart breaks a little at watching his struggle between his desire to be tough and craving for comfort. Finally, the child in him wins out as he offers her his hand - his left thumb is bleeding heavily where the scalpel slid deep into it. "Well I hate to say it Tim, but I think this'll need stitches. You're rather brave you know. I've stuck myself with a scalpel once and it hurt like…well, I shouldn't say." She smiles at him, sharing a conspiratory twinkle as she rises up off her knees, "Let's get you patched up. Do you want to come with me, or shall we do it here?"  
"Can we…stay here please Sister? I promised Dad I wouldn't leave."  
"Well, I suspect the promise didn't take bodily harm into account, but far be it from me to lead you astray. Keep up that pressure and elevation and I'll go fetch the supplies." Instinctively and almost thoughtlessly, she runs her hand over his cheek, drying a stray tear, "You'll be alright for a few minutes?"

She returns quickly from her foraging expedition down to A&E and quickly sets up shop, seating herself on the floor, spreading a small plastic liner on her lap, snapping on the gloves and getting to work. The whole time she keeps Tim talking, keeps his mind off of her actions - despite his attempt at bravery, there's the sweet, scared little boy in pain. She begins by cleaning the wound - even though there was no visible debris (goodness knows how long that scalpel had been there) and a quick glance at the offending object reassured her it was fairly clean. As Tim shifts the conversation from the school project to the book he just started reading, she applies the topical and blows on it to heighten the cooling sensation to make him laugh. "Now Tim, do you know what the next step is?"  
"You sew me up?"  
"Almost. First I have to give you an anaesthetic, do you know what that is?"  
"It stops the pain of you sewing me up?"  
"Not quite - it stops you from feeling the pain. The tingles you felt was to numb it so I can give you the proper anaesthetic. Once that starts, I can sew you up."  
"Can I watch?"  
"Absolutely, but it's also ok to not watch if you don't want to. I've had great, big hulking men three times my size look away."  
"That's because they're not as brave as I am."  
"You are being exceptionally brave." She concedes. "Now, I'm going to give you the needle - I need you be very still, like a game of statues. Just let me know when you're ready."  
"Ready!" He squeezes his eyes shut and waits and waits and waits… "Sister Bernadette, did you…" He opens one of his eyes to peek, only to see her pull the needle out from his hand. "Wow! You're really good - I didn't even feel that!"  
"I'm not too shabby of a nurse, if I do say so myself." She teases. "Now, I'm going to start, and as I do, I need you to help me by telling me about this Harry Potter book."

She begins the work at hand by focusing intently, letting his words wash over her. Small, deft movement to stitch his finger back together. From the corner of her eye she sees the door open and she quietly reminds Tim to be very still. "Like statues." He recites back to her before greeting his father without looking at him.  
"Tim, are you alright?"  
"We had a bit of an accident, but I don't think we'll need to amputate. Just a few stitches. Perhaps we should leave scalpels in the OR next time?" She smiles up at him briefly to show she's joking before she returns to the task at hand, sensing him join them on the other side of his desk.  
"I came in to pick up a file, Tim, what were you doing?"  
"I was just working on my homework project -"  
"With a scalpel Tim? You could've been seriously hurt! And what if Sister Bernadette wasn't here?"  
"You always say there's no point in playing 'what ifs'."  
"Don't change the subject Tim. I'm very disappointed - you know the rules about scissors and knives at home, why would you think they don't apply here?" He sees his son bow his head but not answer. "I'm speaking to you Tim."  
"I'm sorry."

A tense moment passes as father and son both focus on her small movements.

"All done Timothy! Care to inspect my handiwork before I wrap it, Doctor?" She looks up to him, a smile on her face and a look in her eye he can't quite read. It looked so much like the look Sarah would give him to shut him up mid-argument in front of their family or Tim. It jars him enough that he tries to pull himself out of his frustrations at his young son and place a quick pat on his shoulder. "Well done Sister. Better than I could've done."  
"I doubt that. You should see the the wee stitches your father can do Tim. Now, let's wrap it up to help it keep clean." He holds his hand out and watches quietly as she wraps gauze around his thumb. They both notice Dr. Turner return to the door. He stops for a moment, unsure of what to do or say. "Dr. Turner, I was wondering if it'd be alright if I took Tim down for a treat?"  
"You really don't have to do that Sister. I'm sure you're busy."  
"I don't have to, but I'd very much like to." She peels off her gloves and gathers everything in the small plastic sheet on her lap. "Besides, I still have thirty minutes on my lunch that I would very much like to spend with Tim. He was telling me about how very different the Harry Potter books are from the movies and we're only on the…third book?"  
"Yup, that's my favourite so far."  
"Well then, you must tell me all about it." She looks up at Dr. Turner from her position on the floor, locking eyes with him, "We'd both very much like it if you could join us after your patient Doctor." There's such a gentleness to her eyes that it softens the firmness of her tone. Her intent is even clearer than earlier when she changed the subject. He's confused enough by this all to stammer out an affirmative and almost walk into the closed door before making his exit.


	5. Deep Shadows

"Hello!" He greets her softly, his voice drawing out the syllables to a long, melodic sounds.  
"Greetings Doctor."  
"Here you are."  
"Here I am." She replies half over her shoulder before turning to the task at hand. The interruption is jarring to the calm in the room brought on by the mundanities of inventory - one of her favourite nigh shift activities, if she can confess. It's methodical nature, surrounded by the near-silence of the night allows the mind to turn to other, more contemplative matters. "Were you looking for me, Doctor?"  
"In a way."  
"So mysterious." She continues to count, her body becomes stubborn, refusing to turn around, unable or unwilling to see him lean against the door of the storeroom watching her. "How can I help?"  
"You can help get me out of trouble with Tim. He's given me this to give to you, and I keep forgetting. He's quite cross with me by now." She finally turns around having jotted down her count. It's off and she knows she'll have to return to it once the doctor leaves.  
"I'm sorry to have gotten you in trouble then."

Another smile. Another moment. Did he always smile her at her this often?

"Ah, yes, well. Entirely my fault." He holds out a sheet of paper towards her. She takes it, careful to not brush his hand, and her heart swells a little in her chest as she looks at the gift she holds.  
"That's me."  
"That is." He takes a step forward.  
"And that's him. And we're on brooms?" She looks up questioning, taken by his proximity.  
"Ah, yes. You're playing quidditch, I believe. It's a Harry Potter thing."  
"I see." Her eyes return back to the page, her finger lightly tracing the colourful image. He's clearly put in so much work and energy - just for her. "He even signed the bottom." Her finger moves to the slightly off-kilter letters in the lower corner. "Thank you, Doctor. I mean, can you thank Timothy for me? I'll treasure it."  
"I should be thanking you Sister." He steps back, awkwardly but sweetly, to allow her more room. "His finger's healed quite nicely. Thank you for taking care of him. He said he wasn't scared at all and if I ever needed stitches, I should ask for you because you're so good at it. This is high praise indeed from the boy who learned his own windsor knot at six because he didn't like how I doing it wrong for him."  
"Oh you poor man." She teases. "I'm sure you do a lot of things quite admirably."  
"Yes well, apparently, I'm not as cool as you. You're all he talks about. I'm afraid you've an admirer in my son, Sister."  
"Well, I'm an admirer of your son." She blinks behind her glasses - as if the light suddenly was too bright, the words too close to home - before turning around back to her work. She tucks the drawing to her clipboard and resumes her counts. "He must be excited for Christmas?"  
"Time off from school, yes." Dr. Turner sighs, leaning back against the doorway once more, "Time with me, a little less."  
"You know that's not true. He practically worships the ground you walk on."  
"I doubt it. This time of year tends to be a little hard for us."  
"I'm sorry." She lowers her head slightly. "It'll be the second Christmas without his mother?"  
"Yes. I worry about him, I really do, Sister. Some times he's so well adjusted and at times it's like we've lost Sarah all over again. I'm sorry." He looks around, realising they're at work. "Sometimes the late hour gets to me. I didn't mean to burden you with my problems."  
"It's not a burden, Doctor. I'm glad you feel like you can confide in me." She says all this with her back to him, her head, ever-covered in her surgical cap bowed slightly. She hasn't counted in a while, nor has she looked at him. Her heart is pounding, her breathing a little off - she wonders if she's getting sick. "I lost my mother when I was very young, Dr. Turner. Children are resilient."  
"I'm sorry - I didn't know. I feel like the more I work with you, the less I know about you."  
"There's not much to know, I'm afraid."  
"I would beg to differ." He shrugs. It's odd talking to someone's back, but he doesn't want to leave, not quite yet. "You still haven't answered my question, I'll have you know. I'm forgetful, but not not that forgetful."  
"I never thought you were." She feigns innocence. "And which question was that?"  
"What did fourteen year old cigarette thieves listen to as they planned their latest caper?"  
"Ah, yes. I can barely recall now, it was so long ago."

He waits, his eyes watching her, a small half-smile on his face.  
She takes a breath, not looking over her shoulder, knowing he's still there.

"Don't you have rounds?"  
"I do - so if you care for your patients' at all, you'll release me from the shackles of my curiosity so I can return my full attention to them."  
"You don't play fair, Doctor."  
"No, I suppose I don't."

She began to recount the three inch gauze rolls, her attention so focused one would believe it was the most fascinating task in the world.

"My father used to collect records - soul and northern soul mostly, the occasional jazz if he were so inclined. We would drive for hours to pick up a single record from a remote town or collector somewhere. He and I spoke very little after my mother passed, but this is what we would do together and listen to together."

He doesn't know how to respond. Somehow this memory seem to be different, harder for her to share than her mother's passing. How little he knows of her. He wonders what else she keeps guarded. He wonders why he doesn't wonder the same thing about Sisters Julienne or Evangelina. He wonders if this is what making friends is like as a grown up, sharing battle scars. For her part, Sister Bernadette wonders when he will leave and why she shared this story with him. She has worked with this man for years, but somehow it's these last months that seem to stand out - that drive her to both seek out his attentions out and hide from them as well. This is what Sister Evangelina warned her about, she suspects, the blurring of boundaries between the lay staff and the religious staff. She will have to work much harder to redraw those lines and boundaries between herself and others.

"Well, I believe I've done my duty and freed you from your curiosity."  
"Hardly Sister, but I am a man of my word. Thank you." He smiles, knowing she can't see it. "And I hope you're right, Sister, about the resiliency of children."  
"I have every faith in you and Tim."

With that, he pushes himself back to standing and walks out, leaving Sister Bernadette alone. Being left alone suddenly felt much more lonely then it did a few minutes prior.


	6. Might as Well Fall In

"So I get to the dock, ready to queue up her new album before tonight's concert, and there's already a phone there. So I look at him, and he's there, with that smile on his face, you know the daft one, and he says 'I was thinking, Nurse Franklin, that we'd do Doctor's choice today.'"  
"However did you survive?" Cynthia quietly teases Trixie from the other side of the lockers.  
"I don't know." Trixie replies, missing the gentle humor. "He made us listen to like, music from before the dawn of time. This must've been what my nans must've listened to- which, to be honest may explain why she was so miserable all the time."  
"You have to admit, Bean, if the occasional insistence on listening to his music in his surgery is the worst of it, we're getting off light." Chummy defends, "I can't tell you about some of the doctors I worked with over at the London. Some of the worst. Treated you as if you were useless because you didn't have a D-R before your name."  
"Still…" Her voice is muffled as she slips on her dress over her head.  
"Oh, Jenny texted saying she got a ticket to the show tonight - she's going to meet us for a drink."  
"Well, what are we doing here then?"

With a flurry of slamming lockers, last minute sprays of perfume, and final checks in the mirror the women leave for the night, leaving Sister Bernadette alone in the change room. She knew she should hurry if she wanted to be on time for compline but she found herself savoring the solitude of her current situation. She shuts her locker, slamming it louder than intended and adjusts her prayer veil in the mirror's reflection, tucking in a stray strand of blond hair. She finds she is becoming more comfortable in the surgical cap but chastises herself for the thought. She'll add it to the list of things she'll have to ask forgiveness for, a list that seems ever growing as of late - she thinks to herself as she slips out of the room.

She's eager to get home, to the walls and world that she knows. She found herself quite out of sorts since the surgery this morning, she knows she should be able to leave it behind, shake off the superficialities of the surgery - Baby Khalid came out safe and sound and expected to make a swift recovery - but she had spent the whole of the surgery unable to look at anyone in the eye, least of all Dr. Turner. It seems silly when she thinks of it, she's certain the Doctor's actions were meant to be kind, thoughtful even, but that doesn't lessen the levels of profound embarrassment she felt in the room, convinced her emotions were on display for all to see. They weren't, but they may as well have been as far as she was concerned. Music has always been a means of expressing emotions so vast and so complex that speech failed. Plainsong during offices for example, allowed her to express and explore the levels of her devotion, her joy and thankfulness at her life, at her opportunities to serve - it's prayer through song. Even before religious life, where so much went unsaid - life was quiet, words were for simple requests, like passing the potatoes, or signing permission forms - but it was music that allowed her her to feel like she knew her athair after her mother died, after her brother left home. "Hello Sister."  
"Oh," She's so lost in thought that she doesn't realize she's almost walked into him on her way out, his voice jarring. "Dr. Turner, hello."  
"You're here late Sister, aren't you?"  
"Lost track of time I suppose."  
"Not like you, is it?" He smiles, walking with her out of the hospital doors. "Mind if I walk out with you?"  
"Certainly not." A lie. Another thing to ask forgiveness for.  
"Are you alright, Sister Bernadette?"  
"Of course, why do you ask?" They join the flow of people on the street, the unseasonably balmy weather this Thursday evening luring everyone out for meals, for drinks, for a chance to so anything at all. What would it be like to be one of these people, to feel the wind through her hair. She needs to get to the safety of her room, she is clearly not herself.  
"Oh, I don't know. You were rather quiet during surgery and you left rather quickly afterwards." They stop at the crosswalk, almost pushed together in the crush. There's an awkward silence for a moment. Dr. Turner clears his throat. "I hope I haven't upset you in any way. If I did, it was completely unintentional." The crowd begins to move once more.  
"Not at all Doctor." She chooses her words carefully. "It's just - it can sometimes be jarring to be reminded of another way of life is all. The intention of it was…very nice, however."  
"Ah. Yes. I don't think I thought of that."  
"Why would you?"  
"I wish I had a cigarette." He chuckles, shoving his hands into his pockets.  
"You're a Doctor and they'll kill you."  
"Not what you said the other night." He completely misses how that line could be misinterpreted.  
"Are you sure I'm not keeping you from Timothy?" She teases, seeing the tube station come into sight ahead of them.  
"Not at all - you're stuck with me, Sister - until the station that is. Tim's in rehearsals for the school play - don't know if you know this, but talent runs in the family."  
"His mother's side?"  
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is…" He throws a hand to his heart, "I'll have you know you are speaking to the star of St. Ignatius' 1979 production of Me & my Girl."  
"Sally?"  
"Ouch - Bill Snibson I'll have you know. Star turn. School never saw anything like it." He puffs his chest out in mock arrogance. "Wait… were you even alive in 1979? No, I'd rather not know." He shoots her a sly smile as they stand to the side of the station's entrance, just out of the stream of people. There's a brief moment, nothing spoken, just standing together.  
"Oh, has Sister Julienne had a chance to talk to you yet?"  
"About?"  
"The board is anticipating a not at all insignificant endowment and we'd like to be ready with a list of requests."  
"Requests?"  
"It's no secret at Nonnatus is ancient."  
"We make do."  
"We certainly do, but we shouldn't have to - our patients deserve better than we can give them. Sister Julienne and I were wondering if you'd be able to help us compile a list of requests? Upgrades, improvements, new equipment." He takes a step closer, excited by the topic, by her openness to helping.  
"Certainly - anything I can do to help." She lifts her eyes to look at him and suddenly time stands still in a curious manner, finds it difficult to breathe. How long do they stay like this, neither of them can tell you, only that it was both too short and too long. "I should..." She nods towards the underground.  
"Yes, yes."

Still, neither of them move.

"Sister," He looks at her as if seeing her for the first time and words tumble from his mouth. "Thank you, for being my friend. I hope I'm not being presumptive?"  
"No, not at all. I'm, quite honored."  
"I'm…glad. Good night, Doctor. Tell Tim to break a leg for me."

* * *

She's late.

She slides into compline and joins her sisters for the last office of the night. She feels Sister Julienne take her hand in hers and smiles at the warmth and the gentle squeeze and raises her voice in song. Strange that she is comforted by human touch, when she has had so little of it for so long. Her face is red, embarrassed at having been late. Allowances are made for the hospital staff because of their work and service to people, but she wasn't at work. She was…with a man. With a friend. She corrects herself. She knows she should've politely corrected or declined his offer, sweet as it was. While not forbidden, friendships made life challenging, distracting from callings and devotions. Some of the sisters were strong enough to balance the demands of both platonic and devotional responsibilities, but they were older, more secure. Her current unease in the world and in her skin leads her to suspect she shouldn't have accepted his friendship, how much of it could she return? But how could she reject him, when he was so lonely? He was a good man and a good father. Her heart aches for the Turner men and she offers up her song in prayer, that despite what confusion is twisting in her soul, that God would help them through.

* * *

 **AN** \- _I always made fun of my parents for watching CTM (an anomaly from their steady diet of British crime shows) but when I was forced to watch the Christmas special this year I was hooked. Immediately, I was drawn to Sister Bernadette during series one, and my heart broke for her in series two. Her story with Doctor Turner was so familiar to me because in a weird way, I was once Doctor Turner, and my (now) ex was Sister Bernadette. She wasn't quite a nun, but close to it - a missionary just back from her mission - and I was a heathen who made her question everything she thought she knew, just by my sheer existence (imagine pupcake x turnadette)._

 _Laura Main & Stephen McGann's beautiful, nuanced and near wordless performances made me ache at how much they were able to communicate with so few scenes. My ex and I went through the wordless months, the avoidance, the prayers (on her end) and even the illnesses and long distances bridged only by unanswered letters. In a way, Heidi & co gave me back everything I had blocked out, denied, locked up and willed myself to forget, and for that I'm so incredibly grateful. In a lot of ways, this fic is an exercise in reclaiming and reexamining some things in the safety of it being fiction._

 _So, if you've made it this far, thanks, and sorry for getting all feels and indulgent on you._


	7. Every Little Bit Hurts

She sits in front of Sister Julienne one morning in the chapel at St. Nonnatus, throat closing with all the words she cannot say.

It's not as if she doesn't have the words, it's more that there's too many of them rushing through her mind. She can hear them, oh Lord, can she hear them. She can hear nothing but them. She cannot speak them though, no matter how clear and how loud they are. They flow from her mind and her chest and they get stuck in her throat and she can do nothing but hold in her tears in front of Sister Julienne. She knows it's envy and jealousy. It's her divine Father testing her devotion by making her watch the lives others live while she has been blessed with her own path. It hurts, and no matter how much she prays, the pain and the wickedness and the discontent don't leave her heart. Rather, they grow roots deep down into her belly until her insides are twisting at the thought of rising from bed in the morning.

She feels Sister Julienne's arms wrap around her and undeserving as she may be, she allows herself this one, small comfort. She drinks in the rare touch of warmth of another person. She takes a deep breath, one after another, until she can pull herself together and pull herself away. "I'm sorry Sister."  
"Whatever for?"  
"For wasting your time. For not being able to speak what's on my heart and my mind."  
"Time spent with a friend is never a waste." She takes the younger Sister's hand in hers. "I often find it helps to speak, about anything, and what needs to be said shall find a way to be said. The first word is the hardest."  
"I…" And then silence.  
"Well, maybe the first few, Sister Bernadette." She smiles benevolently as she waits, watching the other woman struggle.  
"I thought I could pray it away, and I tried, you have to believe me, I tried. Except I don't know what I'm praying away. I thought that no one else could see it and then Sister Monica Joan this morning saw it, she's seen it all along in me."  
"Seen what?"  
"I don't know." She pauses to reflect, "It hurts, Sister." Finally. "It hurts and I don't know where or why, or how to make it stop."  
"What kind of pain? Are you ill?"  
"I don't know. If I knew, I could fix it, I could cure it. It hurts everywhere, from my soul to my head. It feels like I'm broken, split into two - Flesh and Spirt. It's as if -"

Sister Julienne's mobile buzzes against the wooden pew, breaking the quiet spell. "Go on." She urges, muting it, eager to help Sister Bernadette in any way she can. Instead Sister Bernadette smiles at her, "Take it, please. I've said my piece, I've said the hardest part." Sister Julienne looks at the woman before her intently - she can see the wall go back up around the younger Sister and the light in her watery eyes dim once more. It hurts her to think of one of her sisters continuing to suffer in such silence, but there's little she can do at this moment. With a squeeze of the hand, she rises and leaves Sister Bernadette alone in the chapel where she found her thirty minutes prior.


	8. I'm Falling, Falling, Falling

"He's not coming, is he?" And with that, Timothy Turner breaks her heart. It wasn't that he was saddened by the news, or that he was sulking, it was that he expected it, anticipated it even. It wasn't fair - it's never fair. "He's going to try very hard, Tim. It was a particularly bad case and he had to help."  
"It's fine Sister." He smiles, or puts on an approximation of one, "It happens." After a moment, he looks up to her and asks, "He's a good doctor, isn't he?"  
"The best I've worked with." It's true, she absentmindedly thinks to herself. He's one one of the most dedicated, hardest working, most supportive… she forces herself to return to the moment and the little boy before her. "Tim, I was wondering, if it's alright with you, would you mind terribly if I stayed and watch?"  
"Really?" The smile grew a little more genuine, reaching his eyes. "But don't you have to go home to pray or something? And I don't mean that to be rude, but... That is what you do, isn't it?"  
"My, what dull lives you think we live!" She teases. "I dare you to ask Sister Evangelina about that the next time you see her."  
"Thirty minutes - actors, please say your goodbyes to your parents! We'll see them after the show!" A harried teacher with a clipboard calls out, trying to clear the classroom/dressing room.  
"You're really going to stay?" Tim asks, not quite believing.  
"Yes, and I'll be right by the door, saving a seat for your father."  
"Parents…" The teacher calls out once more, in her direction (clearly missing her prayer veil). Before she can say anything, Tim wraps his arms around her then lets go and runs out the room.

Children really are resilient creatures, capable of absorbing so much more than they should. She tries to not think back twenty some odd years ago when her brother offering to stay and watch, their father unable to make it. She missed him. She should write to him this weekend. He did the best he could, they all did. It's these thoughts that keep her company as she returns to the auditorium and the two seats she's already claimed with her coat. The lights go off, and with a final look around in hopes to catch the Doctor, she settles in for the show.

Meanwhile, Dr. Turner runs down the empty halls - a giant amongst knee height art and water fountains - half-expecting to be chastised like he was a pupil. He hopes he hasn't missed a great deal of it. He promised Tim he'd make it tonight, but when Nurse Lee pulled him in to help with a complicated case, what could he do? It was a miscarriage of a twin which triggered the premature labour of the other twin. He had no choice but to stay and help, asking Sister Bernadette if she could call the school to let Tim know. He pulls up short to the doors of the auditorium and peeks into the window, there he is, his boy, on stage. He opens the door and slips in, his eyes focused on his son. The audience erupts with laughter and one voice in particular catches his ear. He glances to his left and immediately identifies the source of it. Of course she'd do it in person. He smiles, not realising he's watching her as intently as she's watching the stage, jarred alert by the small orchestra's opening chords to a song. He makes his way to the empty seat beside her and whispers his greeting. He's rewarded by a smile so wide and so electric that his heart skips a beat. She hands him a paper program and returns her attentions back to the stage.

After a moment, so does he.

* * *

"What did you think? What did you think?" He runs out out into the hall filled with waiting family, launching himself into her. "WasIloudenough? Couldyouhearme? Didyouseemetrip?" His words blur together, muffled further into her clothes. "You were fantastic Tim!" She wraps her arms around him, giving him a good squeeze, as much for her sake as his.  
"Amazing!" Dr. Turner chimes in, crouching down.  
"You made it! You made it!" He let's go of Sister Bernadette and hugs his father.  
"I did and you were brilliant!" He leans into his son's ear and whispers "You were the best one! Even Sister Bernadette said so and she can't lie."

Watching father and son burst out laughing, there's a tightness in Sister Bernadette's chest and she feels very out of place. Before she can excuse herself, one of the little girls from the play comes up to Tim and together they run off. She's followed by her parents, two attractive men who shake the Doctor's hand, then hers as he introduces her to John and Jack Smith. Before she can ask about their names, one of them (she's not certain which) beats her to it that it is in fact, their real names. She likes them already. "We're about to take Lizzie out to dinner because we're awful, awful parents and can't be arsed to cook anything tonight. Care to join us?"  
"What do you say?" Dr. Turner looks at her. "Or do you have to get back?"  
"I have a shift actually in an hour."  
"What? You were at work all day."  
"I was working on the budget reviews."  
"Oh, you work at the hospital too?" One of the Smiths asks.  
"Budgets and then hospital work?" You're a better person than I am." The other Smith teases. "What?" He asks, noticing his partner's pointed look, "I've known some mean nuns in my day."  
"So've I." She confesses, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.  
"Why don't Tim and I drop you off at the hospital?" Dr. Turner offers, smiling at her, hoping he's retained a little bit of charm. "Least I could do."  
"Not at all! It was my pleasure - I can't tell you the last I saw a show this good was. You and Tim go out to dinner, he's having so much fun!"  
"No, I insist. It won't -"  
"Children, children," Interrupts one of the Smiths, eyeing them with a smile. "Why don't we take Tim out to dinner, and you can drop Sister Bernadette at work?"  
"You wouldn't mind?" Dr. Turner asks, "I'd hate to-"  
"Not at all! We'll drop him off at home."

They all walk out together and split up at their cars: the Smiths and Tim off for a late dinner and Dr. Turner taking Sister Bernadette back to Nonnatus for her shift. "You didn't have to drive me, Doctor." She half-heartedly chastises him, "I'm sure Tim'd have liked some time with you."  
"You overestimate my worth compared to Lizzie. She's second only to you." He unlocks her door and holds it open, grinning as she gets in. Once situated, he runs over to his side and starts the car. "Now, very important question, do you want to dj or shall I?" He holds out his phone. She looks at it, and then at him and she's overwhelmed with guilt. She shouldn't be enjoying herself as much as she has been tonight. She really shouldn't. She shouldn't be acting like she is friends with these people, or a part of their lives. "Sister?" She snaps out of her introspection.  
"Driver decides." She smiles. "That was the rule growing up."  
"Alright then." He smiles and shrugs, pressing play and pulling out of the parking spot. She recognises within seconds. It's Aretha, soulful and strong, begging her partner to hold her, to meet her at the dark end of the street. Sister Bernadette feels that she's singing to her and her alone in the dark as they drive through London at night. She can hear him hum along and she smiles, suspecting if the doctor were alone he would be singing along. "Quite the accomplished hummer you are." She comments, staring intently out the window.  
"I told you, talent runs in the Turner family."  
"I suppose it does." And the conversation ends once more.

The drive back to St. Nonnatus is quick.

Too quick, part of her thinks. only to feel guilty at the thought. He parks in the staff lot and turns off the car. Before she realises it, he's back at her side, opening the door. "You could've dropped me at the front."  
"Hardly gentlemanly behaviour, now is it?" They take their time walking towards the hospital - in and out between the bright white pools of lights and inky black darkness. The air is clear and chilly and it helps wake her up. Their silence gets more obvious with every step. "Thank you." Dr. Turner begins, stopping short. "Not just for letting Tim know I'd be late, but for staying with him. He..." Dr Turner sighs, hair falling over his eyes, "He doesn't talk a lot about what he feels. It's all there below the surface though if you look. You made him so happy. Thank you."  
"He was happy you made it is all." She doesn't comment about how he shares that trait with his son. How he also bottles everything in until it floats beneath the surface of his own skin - pain, exhaustion and loneliness.  
"He ran to you, he was happy because of you. He didn't realise I had made it."  
"Well…" She doesn't know what else to say. She doesn't say she that she would do anything to protect that little boy from feeling hurt, ignored or unimportant. That her feelings towards him are becoming something fiercely protective. "You're not the only thespian around, I had to keep an eye on the competition. You're talking to St. Cecilia's Sally Smith, 1992."  
"You never mentioned that."  
"A woman needs her secrets Doctor.  
"Hang on, did you say '92, ouch!" Dr. Turner moans, following her. "You're a baby! I'm an ancient, decrepit ogre compared to you." He's so busy self-deprecating himself that he doesn't see how or why Sister Bernadette trips until she's on the ground. "Sister!" He rushes to her side, somewhere in the shadows of the safety lights and the dark, helping her get up and brush herself off. He feels a sticky wetness in her palm, her hand cool in his. "I'm afraid you've cut yourself."  
"Well, no need to amputate I hope?" She jokes before taking her hand back. "I'll just rinse it off inside. Thank you." She takes her hand back and dashes inside.

He waits for a moment in the shadows before following her inside the bright building. He runs into Nurse Crane who directs him to one of the furthest exam rooms. "You alright?" He asks, leaning on the doorway, watching her clean her hand under running water.  
"Oh, yes. I was right, no amputation necessary." She sneaks a quick look at him over her shoulder before turning back.  
"Want me to take a look at it?" He waits before entering the room. Everything feels heavy, weighted with something he can't quite put his finger on it.  
"Yes." She turns around immediately, holding out her hand as if she were a child. He makes his way to her and gently takes her hand in his. He can feel her eyes on him as he does a quick exam of her hand, wincing slightly as he runs his thumb over her pollicis brevis which is still bleeding.

They stand there, him holding her hand.

They don't move, they don't speak.

She waits with bated breath to see what he will do. His eyes are down, staring at her hand, fixated by how light and small it looks in his. He can make her out just beyond his line of sight.

She holds her breath but still she doesn't move.

His mind screams at him - but to do what, he isn't sure. The more things fall into place, the more complicated they get. He lowers his head to her palm and brushes the softest of kisses to it. It's no more than a graze of his lips to her chilly hand - trying to convey every ounce of his tender affection towards her through this one singular act. He shuts his eyes as he feels her yank her hand back as if it burned. What did he just do? Something stupid, obviously. "Shit. Shit. That was…unforgivable." Her back is to him, shoulders tense, one hand cradling the other. "I am…so sorry."  
"Nothing is truly unforgivable if we ask for forgiveness, Doctor."  
"You're the expert in that area, Sister."  
"I…" She takes a small breath. "I am not turning away because of you, but because of Him." Her heart splits in two as the pieces fall into place. "I need you to know and to accept that."  
"If I didn't, I wouldn't deserve your friendship. Which I hope I still have." His heart soars and plummets as he turns and leaves, returning to his car. He refuse to think about her final words to him.

His would call his feelings for her sudden, except they're not. They have been ever present and growing daily - nurtured by kind words, shy smiles, by sideways glances and confidences shared. How could there be any end but this, his heart and soul brought ever so slowly back to life by this woman?


	9. A Slow Show

**AN:** At first it was all ' _Awesome! Wow_!' because I could write all the words to the wordless scene in bed. And then the words came (too many words), and it was much less ' _Awesome! Wow_!' because there's such a gamut of emotion that Laura Main and Stephen McGann can get through without words. I've parsed down as much as I could but still feel like it's entirely too much… Let me know :/

* * *

Her palm needed 7 stitches.

She doesn't know what caused her to fall that night, having walked by that spot in the car park countless times since, trying to identify what it was that sent her life careening off course.

She only knows she wants this man.

She wants him in every way of the word and the thought exhilarates her and sickens her. She doesn't allow herself the luxury of daydreaming or fantasies about him, but they still creep into her thoughts and her dreams, filling her with as much pain as they do pleasure. She wants to be beside him constantly, talk to him, listen to him, chastise him for smoking and then ask him to share. She wants his lips on her palm, her skin, her everywhere. She wants to talk to him and hear him talk. She wants to come home to him and his son and to pack lunches for them and she wants to remind Tim not to forget his permission forms and she wants to be there beside Dr. Turner for every school play and music recital. She wants so little but still so much. It's like the lights are on in her life and she can finally see the world around her clearly, but it's on the other side of the glass.

She wants this man.

She may even love him.

Finally she has the words to explain this fixation, this preoccupation. Now she knows the cause of her illness, her pounding heart, her red cheeks, her fluttering heart and her difficulty breathing and because she knows, she can pray the desire away. What good is the sacrifices of her devotion if it came easy to her? She found adaptation to devotional life easier than some, and now she is being asked to give up something difficult, almost impossible. She will do what is asked of her, gladly and willingly. She will not ask why the lord would give her these feelings only to have her deny them. What hurts more than being denied the chance for any of this is that her feelings - whatever they may be - are returned and reciprocated in part by the Doctor. He's never said anything that could remotely be construed as inappropriate - but looking back, she can see those glances, those hesitations, his careful attentions as symptoms that he is afflicted with the same illness. She can take the pain of seeing him but not having him - but to think or suspect that she could be hurting him in the process is almost too much to bear.

She turns in bed, another morning of waking before her alarm (not that she requires it anymore) and runs her finger over the fresh scar on her palm. She can do nothing more about her want of Dr. Turner other than channel it towards her work, her prayers. Infuse everything with the energy she would've lavished upon him if she were free to. There is little consolation, knowing she will continue to see him day in and day out. She tries to blink away the tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. She should rise, but she can't quite bring herself to get up. It's on here, in the safety of her bed that she can indulge herself in these emotions - luxuriating in them like a warm bath.

She has spent countless hours just like this, contemplating and reviewing her behaviour as well as his. Examining every act while her angry red wound turned brown and grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared, leaving nothing but these thin, white lines. There must have been something in her soul that reached out to him. And there must have been something in his that saw her and felt the same. Something in him that sought her out, that worked to please her, to make her smile. She would be lying if she said she hadn't noticed his efforts, his hesitant but growing attempts at coming out of his shell. She had more than noticed, she had been touched by them, charmed. He charmed her, one shy smile at a time. She didn't flatter herself that it was anything other than a crush on his end, like a schoolboy on his teacher. She was quiet and was never considered a great beauty before her vows and lately took to avoiding mirrors whenever she could, too much temptation towards vanity. A crush would've dissipated by now, wouldn't it? Here it was, months later and he still gazed at her curiously on the off chance they were scheduled on the same surgery or crossed paths in the hospital. Her stomach still twisted in knots. Her heart still raced at the thought of his name. As she did every morning, Sister Bernadette squeezed her eyes shut in hopes that when she opened them, this would all go away.

They never did.

* * *

"Sister, I'm so glad I caught you before you left. A word?" Sister Julienne summons her from the doorway of her office in Nonnatus House, the small house the sisters shared off of a small chapel a few blocks Hale St and All Saints Church. Sister Bernadette feels her stomach twist even more - the childhood instinct of being summoned to a superior's office never quite left her. She is certain others can see her guilt across her face - how could they not? "How are you Sister?" Sister Julienne begins, sitting on her side of the desk and motioning for her to do the same.  
"Good, and yourself?"  
"I mean truly, how are you? I have thought about and prayed for you often but you seem no better then when we last spoke."  
"I'm sorry, I will try harder to -"  
"No, that wasn't what I meant, Sister. We want to help. All of us. Just tell us. Don't carry this all on your own."  
"Thank you." Sister Bernadette murmurs, eager to change the subject, knowing that it is, in fact, all hers to carry.  
"I received a call from the Mother House - it's Sister Monica Joan, they aren't certain how serious it is and they're asking me to go straight away."  
"How can I help? What can I do?"  
"I need to ask you a great imposition Sister. I'm supposed to meet with the board to discuss the endowment in an hour. The only person I can trust to do us justice is you."  
"Sister, I can't."  
"You can. You're the one who did all the work, you know every number, every request, every roll of elastic bandage and every machine in need of repair, upgrade or purchase." She rises, indicating the conversation is drawing to a close. "Dr. Turner will be here in a few minutes, just let him know you're stepping in for me." She slips into her coat and takes her bag. "Never change, Sister Bernadette. I would be utterly lost without you." And with that, she leaves the room on her way to the Mother House.

She can do nothing but wait now. She pulls out the board deck she and Sister Julienne had prepared and attempts to review but finds herself distracted. She has taken full advantage of her role and worked her schedule to an almost entirely opposite reflection of Dr. Tuner's (she feels only a little guilty, certain that the lord would understand, even if Dr. Turner did not). A whole day beside him. This is certainly punishment for her morning indulgence. She has been wicked in her thoughts and now she must atone. She closes the deck - she knows every number and every chart and instead chooses to sit quietly and prays for strength to get through not only the discussion with the board but also the day with the Doctor. She stays like this, focused in prayer until the phone rings: "Nonnatus House."  
"Hello Sister Julienne. I'm right outside but there doesn't seem to be a place to park."  
"I'll be right there." She stammers before she hangs up. She doesn't correct him, he'll find out the truth soon enough.  
She gathers her coat and bag and walks out of the office and out of the house. He's double-parked outside, leaning on the car waiting for her. Well, Sister Julienne. She makes her way down the stairs, offering up one more prayer for strength to make it through, when he turns around. Shock is evident on his face as scrambles to the other side of the door to open it for her. "Sister Bernadette."  
"Doctor." She greets him, sliding past into the car. She takes a deep breath before he gets into the car. "Sister Julienne was called away on an emergency."  
"Oh dear, I hope nothing serious?" He pulls the car away from the others and enters traffic once more.  
"Emergencies generally are." She comments, the softness of her tone tempering the curtness of the words. "It's Sister Monica Joan."  
"Oh, I'm sorry."  
"Thank you. How's Timothy?"  
"Good. Asks about you often." There's a moment before he continues, almost embarrassed at himself. "He's taken up writing now. He's no longer content with just starring in productions, he's determined to be the next Sondheim. You can change the music if you'd like." He nods towards his phone.  
"This is fine. Let's hear what makes Dr. Turner happy when no one is around." He doesn't say anything, just doubles his efforts of focusing on the road and changes it to the radio instead.

The conversation begins and dies like that. So much they'd like to say and nothing that they can. The language of lovers is a difficult one, she realises, gazing out the window.

They arrive at the board meeting and walk in together, side by side. Neither of them mentions the proximity of the other, the near brushes of their hands, the matching pace of their walk.

They don't talk of the strength they draw from the other as they are introduced to the fourteen members of the Board of Directors of the NHS.

They simply present their request for a share of the fifty million pound endowment, bouncing near effortlessly off of the other's arguments, comments and passionate pleas. They are far from the richest of neighbourhoods - other hospitals in more affluent neighbourhoods pull in larger donations due to the financial status of their patrons. More affluent neighbourhoods have healthier patients, have the ability to support their communities in more wholistic ways. St. Nonnatus has always served the poorest of the poor which often meant the sickest of the sick. Their community was a constantly evolving one as the upwardly mobile migrated upwards, leaving them with those with the least resources to care for themselves and their family members. They speak of their staff's dedication, of their rich history, of their miraculous cases and when none of that moves them, Sister Bernadette launches into their numbers, surprising the board with the average age of their equipment, their lower than NHS standard equipment to patient ratio and their NHS average patient appointment wait times. Her shyness is forgotten as she passionately discusses their spend per pound, noting that administrative costs took up only seven percent with the rest going directly to patients either in the form of equipment, services, salaries and the like and compares it to other hospitals in the city, some averaging as high as twenty three percent towards administrative costs. She doesn't just believe they're one of the best hospitals, she has the numbers to prove it and she makes them believe it as well.

The board dismisses them at the end of their allotted time and they find themselves alone in the hall, overcome with exhilaration. "Well done, Sister! I was ready to donate my first born after that!" He grins at her and she beams back, brighter than the sun. She's practically shaking with nerves, and he knows how hard that was for her, his normally reserved Sister Bernadette. He wants more than anything to place a hand on her arm, her shoulder, to calm and steady her. To touch her. Recalling the last time he gave in to his instincts, he thinks better of it and shoves his hand in his coat pocket. "You were incredible. Truly incredible."

"Oh, so were you! I don't think I'd have been able to do it without you." Her eyes find his and for a moment, he thinks he sees something familiar in them. They both relish in the moment, to be able to look at one another uninterrupted. He will stand here like this as long as she'll let him. He know's it's a sad sort of man who fancies a nun, but it seems that who he's become. Finally, the light in her eyes dims as she remembers who and what she is. Without a word, she lowers her head and begins to walk down the hall towards the exit.

* * *

He doesn't speak to her again for another six weeks when he interrupts morning offices at Nonnatus House. He's heard from a reliable source that the board is announcing their funding decisions in a few days and St. Nonnatus Hospital will be receiving a tidy portion of it. Sister Julienne embraces him and Sister Bernadette, though she lingers in the doorway, neither in nor out of the hallway, can't hide the joy in her heart.


	10. (When it Gets) So Late

He misses her immensely.

Can you miss someone you never…really had in your life?

He knows it's ludicrous but he truly misses Sister Bernadette in his life. He misses her smile, he misses catching her eye over her mask in surgery, he misses the way he feels when he's with her. He often wonders what it says about him that the first attachment he's made since Sarah's death is towards a nun. Except she's not just a nun, she's…so smart, and so good with Tim, and so funny (in a sly sort of way). She's simply marvellous. He's not an idiot, or, (he corrects himself), he's not enough of an idiot to wonder why she's avoiding him. He kissed her - her hand at least. He will never forgive himself for that violation of trust. It's against everything he's tried to instil in Tim about women and men and autonomy. He still doesn't know what came over him. It was selfish of him, and wrong, but he had to let her know how he felt. Words were never his strong suit, Sarah always teased him about his grunt of a marriage proposal. Now, with almost no one to talk to save for his son and the occasional chat with Lizzie's parents, he didn't trust his words to convey the depth and breadth of his feelings, whatever they were and how he foolishly acted.

He knew he had feelings for her. He knew they were complex, sticky and messy. He doesn't know the extent though - if he could just talk to her or see her. He had to know. Was it as hard for her as it was for him?

He shifts in his chair. He should've gone home hours ago when his shift ended, but with Tim sleeping over at Lizzie's house, he found himself staying late under the guise of catching up on paperwork and funding updates for the next hospital board meeting. If he should happen to cross paths with Sister Bernadette who was scheduled for night shifts, then so be it. That said, her shift started over two hours ago and he still hasn't dare venture out of his office. What would he say to her? What could he say to her? There was a dull heaviness in his chest, something he hadn't felt in years. He couldn't wait to see her, but couldn't bear it either. There was no other option - he would live his life avoiding her. This was clearly the only practical choice. He rose from his chair, shut down his laptop, and slipped on his battered tan trench - the one that always made him feel like a character from a black and white film - and left his office. Once out into the hall, he did a quick scan, saying good night to Nurse Miller at the desk and headed down an empty corridor towards the elevator when a movement catches his eye, in the hall branching to the right is a familiar form crouching beside a child, no older than five or six, both of them peeking into the large window of one of the neonatal rooms. Watching her with this girl, he can't help but smile, a shadow of longing coming over him… What would it be like, he wondered, getting lost in the thought of a little girl with her blue blue eyes and her habit of pursing her lips. "She's a natural with the kids, isn't she?" Nurse Franklin comments to him, coming up from behind, a few charts in her hands. "Personally, I always thought it was a waste, this whole nun thing, she's be such a great mum, but…who am I to judge?" She asks, "Civilian living hasn't exactly panned out for me… Any longer and I'll have to see if they're recruiting?" She smiles as she heads down towards the main hall. Sister Bernadette turns her head slowly as if sensing him and he blushes, embarrassed at being caught admiring her. He offers a half wave towards her and she smiles and offers one back before she rises and takes the little girl into the room.

There he stands, alone in a half-lit hall nearing midnight, ecstatic over the fact that perhaps she didn't hate him. Oh Turner, he thought to himself, turning to the elevation and pressing the call button, what happens to you. He's there lamenting that fact when movement to the right catches his eye again. Sister Bernadette slips out of the room, pale enough that he can see it from here. She scurries away towards a supply closet, but her movements are frantic. Something is wrong. He knows that, there is no question about it. He abandons the elevator and makes his way to her, crossing the distance in two or three steps, his heart racing. "Sister?" He asks, knocking on the door, "I'm coming in" He feels silly knocking, but doesn't want to surprise her. He gently opens the door just wide enough for himself and enters, shutting it softly behind him. Her back is to him, a replay of when she was inventorying, of when she turned away from his ill conceived advances. Even in the half-light he can see from her back how laboured and shallow her breathing is. Her hands are gripping the shelf in front of her and he suspects if he could see them, they'd be white knuckled. "Are you alright Sister?" He asks, hand outstretched to her back but unable to bring himself to touch her once more.

"Yes Doctor, just needed a moment. Can I help you with anything?" Her voice is strong but shaky. It reminds him of something, he's been through this before but can't quite place the memory.

"No, no, I just ah… wanted to make sure you're alright."  
"Quite fine." She insists too-cheerfully.  
"I see." He takes a few steps to stand beside her and turns to look at her. Her face is ashen, a thin sheen of damp across it. Her teeth are clenched. "I really think you should sit down."  
"No need."  
"I disagree."  
"I'm fine Doctor." She doesn't snap, exactly, but she does emphasise every syllable in his title.  
"Sister, elevated heart rate, rapid shallow breathing, cold, clammy skin and grasping on to shelves for dear life are hardly signs of good health."  
"How do you know my skin is cold and clammy?" She challenges, trying to distract him, to reassure him she's fine enough to be left alone. Being alone is all she can have when all she wants is to curl up against him and have him tell her everything will be fine. She's so focused on staying upright, not looking left at him that she doesn't see him place a gentle hand on her wrist until she feels the warmth and weight of it. His fingers curl around, checking her pulse. She closes her eyes and launches into the Lord's Prayer, a habit left over from childhood, taking great care to annunciate each word as she says them by rote in her mind. He releases her wrist and she feels the loss acutely but continues to pray. She doesn't know how long he's there with her, she can feel him, even with her eyes shut, she can feel him beside her, she can smell his scent of antiseptic, sweat and a faint trace of cigarettes and it reassures her.

From behind she can hear the door open and shut and after a moment she can feel a soft hand on her shoulder and another on her hand. "Sister." The familiar voice of Sister Julienne greets her ears. "Dr. Turner tells me you're not feeling well. Are you well enough to make it to an examination room?" She opens her eyes and looks at the older woman and that says it all. "Doctor, perhaps we can do it here?" She suggests, shooting a look over the younger woman's head.

"Right." He feels around his pockets and his neck, his habit of being forgetful paying off when he locates his stethoscope. "Did you want to sit?" She shakes her head no. "Right then… " She sees him stammer, the chest piece of the stethoscope hovering but not quite touching her. She bites her lip and tries to remove her scrub top, Sister Julienne wordlessly helping getting it over her head. She cannot bear to look at him she's so ashamed and confused, standing there in her undershirt and bra. She hasn't had thoughts of disrobing before him, but she has certainly had dreams, vivid ones where the emotions they caused were exciting and confusing - not at all like this. Dreams where Sister Julienne wasn't beside her, holding her hand and her waist. Did she will this into existence? Did she bring this upon herself? She doesn't notice him warm up the flat of the metal in his hand before tenderly placing in on her back "In…" He murmurs, pressing and lifting. "Again." He clears his throat and mumbles about the frontal. She wordlessly reveals herself to him, turning her head off to one side, unable to even look at him. This is not how she wants him to see her.

"In." She breathes in, his heart breaking with every laboured breath she takes.  
"Out." He wants nothing more than to touch her, to comfort her but he can't. All he can do is make this exchange as painless as possible for her.

He doesn't look at her beyond the few square inches of flesh and cotton and metal, focusing on these parts of her instead of the whole of her. He would be lying if he said he hadn't thought or dreamt of this moment, even once, but not like this. Anything but this. He didn't believe in a God but he couldn't help but wonder if this was in part his own fault, having fallen in love with a nun. And that's when it hits him him, as he places the stethoscope around his neck, nodding at Sister Julienne for help with her top once more. He loves her. He loves Sister Bernadette. He doesn't love her because of her stubbornness, her intelligence, her dedication, her devotion. He simply loves her because. That's all. He didn't think it would happen to him again, a life with Sarah was more than any man deserved. Perhaps that was the catch? He was able to have a life with Sarah, however short it was before she died, but she loved him and he loved her. He would never have that with Sister Bernadette, no matter how much he loved her, how devoted he was to her. He would be fine with that too, if it meant it wasn't as bad as he thought this was going to be. He forces himself to put this aside as he looks at the two women before him and speaks: "Crackles. On both sides." She nods, understanding. "Sister, how long…how long have you been feeling like this?" There's the question.  
"I don't know." She answers truthfully, "I always thought it was something else." Her blue eyes flick up, unconsciously, and lock with his through her lashes before she looks away once more. Both their hearts race at the exchange. "Months?" She hazards a guess.  
"Months." He repeats, heart falling. How much time have they lost?  
"Right." Sister Julienne steps in, reminding both of them of her presence. "Sister, you're to go home. We start tests tomorrow morning. Doctor, can I ask you to dri-"  
"Absolutely - anything I can do to help."  
"No." Sister Bernadette speaks, finding her voice "I'm in the middle of my shift, I've too much to do. I can finish-"  
"It's not a matter of can you but should you. Until we're certain of what this is, we can't put your patients at risk."  
"I can work in the office, I can finish the month of reports that are overdue and on your desk."  
"Sister, you are under the assumption that I am asking you to go home." The squeezes her hand to take the edge off of her words. "As Sister-in-Charge at work and at home, I am instructing you to go home. Please, let us take take care of you. Let us help you for once." They can see her shoulders rise, ready to argue, then fall. "Doctor, I'll help her collect her coat."  
"Yes, I'll just, pull my car around to the front."


	11. (careful) Fear and (dead) Devotion

I have only two emotions  
Careful fear and dead devotion  
Everything I love is on the table  
Everything I love is out to sea  
\- The National

* * *

The ride to Nonnatus goes faster than usual he thinks to himself. Time has altogether a different property whenever they're together, especially when in the dark. He can't help but think of nighttime as their time. He knows there must be a pithy quip about lovers in the night, but can't seem to think of a specific one. Nor are they lovers, not exactly.

He loves her, that much he knows. Just thinking it makes him smile in the dark as he takes the left turn. As for her, he sometimes suspect that she cares for him. That will have to be enough. He's survived on much less since Sarah's death.

Death.

No, not possible. It's just crackles, it can be a multitude of things, he tells himself. Somewhere in his stomach he can feel something harden and twist. It's not just crackles. It was the same with Sarah, a lingering cold that never left. He says he doesn't believe in intuition, but… he won't finish the thought. If he doesn't finish it it won't come true. Childish superstition is all he has right now. "Sister, I never got a chance to apologise for that-"

"I don't very much feel like talking, if that's alright with you Doctor."

"Absolutely."

A moment between them passes.

"You don't have to apologise." She's looking out the window, oblivious to the fact he can see her reflection in the window.

"I would very much like to."

"Maybe some other time. Not today." She doesn't want to hear him apologise for the kiss. She doesn't want to risk hearing him say he regrets it. Regrets her. She wants to speak of love but can't, so she will speak of nothing at all. A lie of omission is still a lie the little voice in her mind warns her.

"Alright."

Silence hangs there and finally she breaks. "It's so quiet." He doesn't respond, "What would would you listen to if I weren't here?"

"But you are here." She is. She is here with him and he never wants that to not be true.

"If I weren't."

"I always tell Tim there's no pointing playing 'what ifs'." He says, taking a moment at the traffic light to pull out his phone and connect it to his car. She smiles towards the window having won the battle and he smiles at her being so easily pleased. He would gladly give up every argument, give in to every request if it meant seeing her smile again. A voice like crunching gravel fills the car. His voice is filled with pain but soothe as well. She leans her forehead on the cool glass. They're almost there. She wishes it would never end, that life would be endless here in the car with Dr. Turner. She can't help but laugh silently. She doesn't even know his name. Is this what it was like for her mother, she thinks to herself. Is this what was going through her mother's mind when she first found out she was ill? Did she want to curl up on the back seat of her father's truck and pray the world forgot about her? She realizes she's the same age her mother was when she fell ill. If she dies… she's no one's mother. She'll have left nothing behind her but tangled ball of yarn that is her relationship with the Doctor, and how it can be that after all this time, she doesn't even know his name. She wonders if this was what it was like for Dr. Turner finding out his wife was sick.

They pull up to the darkened house. It's well after the Great Silence and her sisters are all asleep. The string heavy music changes to a rather insistent drumbeat that matches the rain that has begun falling on the roof and windows of the car. Dr. Turner turns off his car but neither of them make a move to get out. They each try to memorise this very feeling of being alone with the other. She listens to the words - she can't make them all out but what she can makes her think this is a perfectly suited song to the doctor. Something about being alone and grieving down to the bone. She sees his finger drum against the steering wheel in sync with the rhythm. She wonders if he knows he's doing it. He's looking out the windshield, but he doesn't see anything. Her heart goes out to him. "I don't know how I would've gotten through Sarah's passing without this album." He finally says, turning his head towards her then back out the window. "It's funny what gets us through." The song changes, it slows, pianos instead of guitars.

"Well," She finally speaks. "Here we are."

"Here we are." He repeats. "It's started to rain."

"It has."

"Pathetic fallacy."

"Sorry?"

"Tim's learning about it in school. He was telling me about it last night. The personification of nature to suit the writer's or artist's mood."

"How is Tim? How did his creative writing story go over?"

"Quite well I think - he was happy enough with it when he handed it in."

"He put in so much work on it."

"He did. So did you from what he said."

"I only checked it over for spelling errors." She downplays her involvement - of finding him in the waiting room chairs one morning before she went home at the end of her shift. Despite (or perhaps because of) the risk of running into Dr. Turner, she joined him for a few minutes which turned into a large number of minutes, before exhaustion and the sound of the Doctor's voice down the hall compelled her to rise and leave.

She catches his reflection in the window and takes her time to memorise what little details of his face that she can. She knows he … has strong feelings towards her. She won't entertain that he loves her. He couldn't possibly, despite what his tenderness towards her would have her hope. He's already watched one woman he loved die, she refuses to make him watch another go through it. She knows that much for certain. She knows that much better than her own name. She knows this isn't a cold or dehydration, just as she knows her feelings towards him isn't simply an infatuation or a crush. She has ignored her body and her mind and her heart for so long that they will be disregarded no longer. She sighs. "Thank you for driving me. I should go in now."

"Yes, let me-" He goes to open the door but she places a light hand on his wrist.

"You've already been more than kind." She lets go and slips out of the car before he can get out.

He watches as she makes it to the front door and lets herself in.

And then he watches after that.

And that's the last time he sees Sister Bernadette.


	12. I Didn't Ask For This Pain, It Just Came

One of her earliest memories was of the ocean.

Behind her were her parents and before her was the wide open nothingness of the ocean. There was something about all that vastness and possibility that scared her even then. It scared her even more than the waves rushing in and rushing out. It scared her more than the sand where she stood remaining solid, while everything else around her shifted and melted away. It was all she could do to stand still, stay upright.

These are the thoughts that fill her mind through the tests and the the barrage of nurses and doctors and technicians who occupy her days now. The more she tries to turn her thoughts to the Lord, the more she's filled with questions. Is she being tested or is she being shown a door? Is the illness in her body a manifestation of the illness in her heart and mind? The imaging is finished and she's wheeled back up to her room where she all but falls asleep the moment she makes it back into bed. She shouldn't be so exhausted, so spent after a few minutes of motion, but she is. She was able to do double shifts without breaking a sweat and now… She tries not to cry. She refuses to cry. The Lord has a reason and a plan for everything, including her. But this thought doesn't bring comfort to her now. Nor does the well-worn bible on the bedside table. It's not that she's angry at what she's going through… except she is. She's angry and confused and exhausted and her body is not her own, her mind is not her own, her heart and her soul are not her own. There's nothing that is hers and hers alone. Nothing makes sense to her. She went from being a healthy woman to…this. She bites her lip and forces herself to look out the window towards the coppery afternoon sun instead of down at her body. It wouldn't do for someone to see her cry.

She reaches out her hand and touches the bible. Tucked in the pages of Psalms is a slim letter being used as a bookmark. She doesn't know if it's the book or the letter that brings her comfort, that helps her slow her breathing, that reassures her (even momentarily) that it'll be alright. But it does. 'Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have increased. Free me from my anguish. Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins'. It was that very line that she was reading and re-reading the first time one of the nurses dropped off the letter, joking about this Dr. Turner having never heard of email. She repeats the words again to herself. 'Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart have increased. Free me from my anguish. Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins'.

Anguish.

What an exact word for what she was feeling. She won't open the letter. She won't open it until she knows what she's going to do with her life. If she'll even have a life. As a nurse, she knew the rarity of her having had developed TB was, but she found the surrounding circumstances even harder to decipher. The infection had spread like wildfire through not only her lungs, but the rest of her body, her left lung had collapsed and she was hospitalised here at St. Ann's for the foreseeable future. She had a roommate, a woman a few years younger who reminded her of the other nurses at St. Nonnatus. She was friendly and offered up her collection of reading materials should she get bored. Her first few days, the younger woman constantly had her little white headphones on, but after a comment or two from her, she would often share her music on the small bedside speakers. It helped, especially at night, to fall asleep to something - the silence being so loud and so different from life in London. Every so often a familiar gravel throated singer would come on - those were the nights she slept best.

"Another letter's arrived for you Sister." A nurse interrupts, helping her roommate from her wheelchair back into the bed. She places it on the bed. "I don't think I know of another man who writes letters anymore." She comments, before heading out of the room. She doesn't turn over, only shifts her arm inch by inch until it feels the crisp edges of the envelope. It's a little thicker than the last, and she wonders what it is he could possibly have to say to her. She curls her fingers around it tightly and brings it to her chest. She imagines she can smell that familiar scent of antiseptic and musk that is so distinctly him. She knows it's all in her mind, but the thought helps her sleep calmly for the few hours before dinner.


	13. Wait For ItLet Me Listen

Just let me hear your voice, just let me listen  
\- The National

* * *

He finds himself spending more time around the nurses station.

He can't help it.

He's taken to lingering about the station completing his forms, reading up on his patients, and generally hoping to stave off some of the loneliness he feels in her absence. He doesn't understand it, he's always been a solitary man, so this painful separation is confusing to him. He feels her loss almost as acutely as the first days Sarah died. At least there was finality there. Somewhere in the all consuming grief, there was certainty that she was gone and never coming back. There was no such relief here. There was hope, not just for her prognosis, but a small, tiny spark that she would come back to him. It was there when he woke, and when he scrubbed in for surgery, when he sat down across from Tim for dinner and when he went to bed. She was so much of an ever constant presence in his heart he worried he was going mad.

So he writes to her to keep from going mad, to keep from missing her, to keep his hope from dying. He writes to her of his day, of Tim, of the nurses, of what he's reading or watching. He asks her questions about her day, her thoughts on everything from cats vs dogs, to how she got her religious calling. Sometimes Tim sends a drawing. Sometimes he adds notes about her patients, or interesting cases. He peppers in gossip around St. Nonnatus: Chummy is engaged to that policeman that was always hanging about, Trixie is now a part of the neonatal floor permanently, Delia and Patsy have met their matches in one another. All the things he hadn't realised, hadn't bothered to notice around him while mired in his grief, now drew his attention. It is through her that he has begun to live once more. How cruel then, that she would leave him alone when all he wanted to do was to share it with her?

He writes to her daily to keep her alive in his mind. There must have been a reason, he posited to her in one of his letters, why they were drawn to one another after all this time. Life isn't cruel, it's simply indifferent. It's everything one can do to find comfort in others. He is not a man of faith, he's never hidden that, but he can speak the language, and he speaks to her of his devotion to her. He questions all the reasons why they would have this connection if they weren't meant to explore it? Why would they be so well matched if meant to go through life alone? What is the point of being alive when so many in their lives have died? That's the one that galls him - they both know the precious scarcity of life, who are they to squander it? He writes to her of all the questions in his heart and his mind - if he hasn't lost her friendship and her respect after the kiss, he can only press forward on his futile quest. He's willing to wait for her. He doesn't write that, he leaves that unspoken. Nor does he mention that he loves her. She's an intelligent woman and he is writing the lines for her to read between - leaving space for her refusal of his affections, of his devotion. He's willing to wait for her to realise it. He has nothing left to lose, not when it comes to her. He knows how rare it is to love and be loved even once in a person's life, he has no illusions of it happening a second time - but no matter what he tells himself, there is the smallest spark of hope buried deep in his belly that it could happen, it could happen with her. He doesn't regret kissing her hand, only the pain it must have caused her. At times he feels like he is up against God for her love (and who can compete with God?) but he knows, as blasphemous as it may be, that his love of her is as true as hers is for God.

He blinks down at the chart in his hand, having written nothing in minutes. More time lost to thoughts of her. On a rare day, he's rewarded with a mention of her name around Nonnatus: a patient asking about her, a nurse commenting how things ran smoother when she was here. Once, he even heard Sister Evangelina chastise a nurse with 'just you wait until Sister Bernadette is back, then you'll see what a proper nurse looks like'. He hoped that story made her smile, even just a little, when she read it. He could see the smile too - her lips pressed together in a thin line, curling up just slightly at the ends, as if fighting herself from a full blown grin.

Oh that mouth. That smile. He knows he's an embarrassment of a man at this point, mooning over her like a teenaged boy. He thought these days were behind him but they clearly weren't. This is how Trixie finds him, smiling at nothing at the Nurses station. "Well Doctor, I'm off." She sighs dramatically, "Shouldn't you be as well?"  
"Ah, yes, after I get through these forms."  
"You know, it may be faster if you actually look down at them." She teases as she begins to file her own pile of folders. "Now, do try not to miss me too much while I'm out."  
"Going somewhere?"  
"Somehow I managed to get four whole, glorious days off. Four. I cannot wait. I'm going to sleep in and stay up late and drink as much tea and gin as I can."  
"Sounds delightful."  
"I know. I think I'm even going to trek over to St. Ann's and see Sister Bernadette."  
"Oh. Really?" His eyes lower to the papers and his pen as if they were suddenly the most fascinating thing he had ever seen. "Have you heard from her? How is she doing?"  
"Well enough I suppose. I think she's bored. I still don't understand why she couldn't have been checked in here. We'd have taken much better care of her." She shrugs and continues. "Anyways, want me to tell her anything?" He thought for a second then smiled - everything he would like to tell her he would like to do in person. "Just, that uh, hello from Tim and I. Oh, and that Tim got an excellent on his story."  
"'Hello and Tim got an excellent on his story' - will do. Don't stay too late." She smiles towards him and heads the hall to begin her weekend.

Four days. In four days he'll know how she is.

He begins his notes all over again.


	14. Supersymmetry

I know you're living in my mind  
It's not the same as being alive  
I lived for a year, in the bed by the window  
It's been a while since I've been to see you  
I don't know where, but you're not with me  
\- Arcade Fire

* * *

The days turn to weeks turn to months.

At least that's what it felt like to her from her bed. Summer had passed by the window of her room and she found herself at the start of fall. She can't help but feel idle, that she's wasting away this time. She is getting better, stronger - physically anyways - but she's no closer to a direction in which she should point her healing body. This constant, ongoing illness made her question everything and the recovery provided her with the time to think but no answers. Still, she can't help but feel as though something had changed.

With every day that passed there was a lightness that began to spread within her soul. She doesn't remember when it began. The questions in her mind didn't stop, but there was a spark, a stray thought that would echo within her _'everything will be all right'_. Every so often, the thought would return, growing louder, staying longer, until the spark caught and became a dull flicker. She drew strength from that flicker, let it embolden her thoughts and grow into a flame that kept her warm in the watery grey of dawn when she was at her loneliest and her coldest. _'Everything will be all right'_ , that's all it said. Possibilities that she had once spent all her energy into banning began to creep into her thoughts. She would no longer run away from these thoughts. She would get lost in them, turn them over and examine them from every angle possible. These thoughts were no longer strangers, she would sit with them until they became better acquainted with one another.

It is in one of these moods that Sister Julienne finds her one day, having finally made the journey to visit her young Sister. She watches from the door for a moment before announcing herself - the younger woman has lost weight and lost colour, but there seems to be a strength of mind that she had lost long before her illness - she can see it in the determined look on her face as she reads the bible in her lap. Her heart grows - perhaps this illness was a gift from God, to help her Sister find her way back to who she was when she started all those years ago. "I hope I'm not interrupting?" She asks, knocking on the door.  
"Sister Julienne - you came!"  
"How could I not when you asked?" She apologises, leaning in for a long, strong hug. "You look well. Better than your letters would have me believe."  
"The infections are clearing, the lung is gaining capabilities back - no marathons for a while, but I suppose I can live with that" She smiles. "You didn't have to come if you were busy, I'd understand - between the hospital and the house. How is everyone? Sister Monica Joan?"  
"If Nurse Franklin was able to make it down, I had no excuse, did I? Everyone is excellent and they send their love. We remember you in our prayers nightly. Sister Monica Joan ate the cake I was planning on bringing you…In your honour of course. She said refined sugars were the last thing your body needed and she would take the burden on herself."  
"Of course she would." She laughs, genuinely missing the eccentric older woman, missing all of her sisters. "Come," The younger woman rises off the bed, "Let's go outside and see if it's really as beautiful as it looks outside."

Sister Julienne lets the silence rest between them as they walk until she can find the right words to break them. Something is different about her young Sister but she can't quite put her finger on it. It's not the illness. It's something else - a spark that has been missing from her for so long has finally returned. Finally the woman in question begins to speak halting words until they become steady sentences. Words that have been buried deep within for months - if not longer - finally find their way out. All but one thought, one secret that the young woman guards deeper and fiercer than ever before. She discusses the 'wilderness of the soul' that she has found herself in, the unending questions she has had and the lack of answers she has found both from within and outside of herself. Question after question comes pouring out, each one a stone that seems to lighten her burden. For Sister Julienne, this isn't the first time she's had to offer council and support to a Sister, or someone in need, but this is the first time that she feels like the words that she wants to say are not the right ones. She knows there's nothing she can do but support and pray for her sister to regain her faith and her strength but in this moment, she feels like it's not enough. Soon, the younger Sister steers the conversation to confession that Sister Julienne doesn't even realise she was dreading: "The doctor feels if I continue this way, I'll be able to return home soon but I don't know where home is, Sister." She pauses for a moment, reflecting. "I have spent the whole of my adult life at St. Nonnatus and with my Sisters. Now I don't feel as if I can return. Not like this." It's a curious pain that Sister Julienne feels, not a sharp, stabbing one of a sudden betrayal, but rather a slow sinking recognition. "Sister, please say something." She wants to take the elder woman's hand but doesn't for fear of rejection. "Anything."  
"My heart breaks that you are in this position, but everyone must walk the path the Lord has meant for them." She takes the younger woman's arm in hers and they continue to walk for a bit in this fashion. "Do you mean to leave us? Religious life? And if so, what will you do? Where will you go?"  
"I don't know. I can't see that far ahead. I thought for a very long time that I was close to death - I wasn't though Sister. I am close to life. I am so close to it - it's just on the other side of the window. I just need to decide which side of the window God wants me on." She takes a moment to steady her nerves, growing bolder, unable to stop now that she's started. "I want things Sister, things I've never thought possible before. Things I didn't even know I wanted. Not material things, but…I want things I can't have in religious life."  
"You aren't the first woman to think about these things. To want these things. There is no guarantee - there never is. Is it worth giving everything up for the chance?"  
"I don't know." The wind in her sails has gone out as quickly as it came in. There in lies the root of all her fear: is she willing to give up her life for the slim chance to live another one? "I don't know. Sometimes just speaking is enough."  
"And sometimes it's not."  
"Well, one step at a time." She begins to steer them back to the hospital, an afternoon chill settling in the air.  
"You are never without a place, a home." Sister Julienne reassures, "The mother house will always welcome you, as will we, if that's what you would like." She says this with such certainty as to convince herself as well as her young sister.  
"Will you… will you be able to send me some clothes?" She asks carefully, she still hasn't decided is what her mind keeps telling her heart.  
"Clothes? Don't you have your…" Her voice dies off.  
"I don't feel able to wear mine anymore. Not…not like this."  
"Of course." She doesn't smile, not truly, but she makes the effort, putting aside her own heartache for this young woman who has just relieved herself of hers. She cannot bear any more of this talk of her beloved sister leaving so she changes the subject completely. "Now, tell me, what gossip did Nurse Franklin bring of the hospital - I am quite behind since you've been ill."

* * *

He kept the letter in his pocket for as long as he could, all through picking Tim up, driving them home, through making dinner. It's not until he Tim is done brushing his teeth does he he produce it, an incentive to hop into bed quickly. A small envelope for Timothy Turner in clear, precise script, delivered ℅ Dr. Turner at the hospital.

He tries (and fails) to not feel jealous over this as he watches his son rip into the letter and read it silently to himself.

He picks up the envelope and places it on Tim's bedside table as he kisses him goodnight and leaves him for the night.

It's hours later when he's interrupted with a sleepy "Dad?" Tim, rubbing his eyes, yawning as he makes his way to his father, sitting in the dark living room, looking out the deluge of rain out the window.  
"Tim, what are you doing up? I put you to bed hours ago."  
"I needed some water." He crawled onto the couch beside his father. "You alright dad?"  
"Yes, just…thinking." He wraps an arm loose around his son's shoulder, drawing him close. It's been a while since they sat like this. He wonders if Tim remembers.  
"You haven't thought like this since mum died."  
"You're right, I haven't." He worries if his son is too perceptive for his age, he worries if he's the reason.  
"Sister Bernadette said to thank you for her letters. She will respond in 'due course' which means, at a future time, or when the time is right." He yawns once more. "I had to look it up. Going to go to bed soon?" The young boy asks, burrowing himself under his father's arm.  
"Shouldn't I be asking that to you?"  
"I asked first."  
"So you did."

The Turner men stay there for the rest of the night, each lost in their own thoughts until they fall asleep where they sit.

* * *

In a hospital clear across London, long after everyone who should be asleep was asleep, she whispered aloud the words she had held in her heart and her soul for so long just to hear what they sound like coming from her mouth.

Sometimes just speaking is enough.

And sometimes it's not.


	15. A Plea, a Petition, a Kind of Prayer

I hold this letter in my hand  
A plea, a petition, a kind of prayer  
I hope it does as I have planned  
Losing her again is more than I can bear  
I love her and I always will  
I'm going out of my mind

Love Letter Love Letter  
Go get her Go get her  
\- Nick Cave

* * *

Another letter arrives.

It looks no different, feels no different than the countless others that arrived. But there is something different about this one - this is the letter that she doesn't stuff into a pocket, a book, a drawer. This is one she holds on to, that she takes with her to her final x-rays. This is the one she fidgets with while waiting for the Doctor to come into the office. This is the one she crushes by accident when they tell her that she'll be free to leave in days.

Days.

She doesn't cry - she's too much in shock. In days her life will be altered irrevocably. She simply makes her way back to her room, grateful to be alone now that her roommate has been discharged, and says a little prayer thanking the Lord for her recovery and to give her strength as she does what she needs to do. She beings to pull out the letters from their hiding place and sets about sorting them.

It's time.

She hadn't read them, afraid of what they may or may not say. What she did with her life had to be her choice. It had to be for her, and about her. It feels utterly indulgent to the woman who had spent the last decade of her life in service to others. God would not want her to continue down the same path if she didn't truly and wholeheartedly believe in it. It was the wholeheartedly part that stings, her heart hasn't been whole in a very long time. Even before the Doctor took up residency in it, there was stirrings, longing for what could have been, and what still might be. For the longest time she thought it was cruel for God to test her, to show her what she could have, to show her the path not taken. She convinced herself that her life of devotion had no meaning if the sacrifice came easy and so she must suffer, watching others have what she desires. She now believes the Lord's insistence in showing her another life, a life she could have if she was just brave enough and honest enough to take it was to show her that there is a choice, and it is hers and hers alone. At least that's what she believes most of the time. That's the trouble with interpreting the will of a deity, you never get verbal confirmation.

She is much closer to knowing her mind and now she wants to know his. With a deep breath to calm her shaking hands she rips into the first letter:

I feel silly writing to you - I haven't written a letter with pen and paper for years. Goodness, my writing really is as atrocious as you nurses say it is. I hope that you can make the words out, though there's nothing of importance here in them, not really. It's quite odd without you at the hospital. For the first few days we all just acted as though you were on holiday, but there's now a new rec open for a neonatal nurse (to stay on after your return of course, you aren't that easy to forget…) (like the Esther Phillips song, have you heard her? I feel you must have - she's fantastic and I think it's very selfish you've been keeping this under your, well your hat for lack of a better word for as long as you have)…

The second:  
… Sometimes I hear something on the radio (or, rather, my phone) and I wonder if you'd like it or if you'd hate it. Sometimes I imagine you'd make fun of me like the other nurses for playing certain songs during surgery. I need you to come back soon and defend me from the cruelty of women like Trixie Franklin and her utter disregard for style and taste. I'm joking, of course. We're going to be bringing her on to be full time on our floor to fill that rec. She's grown so much, leaps and bounds as they say. Patients are her strong suit. The scared ones. Oh, they're all scared, but you know the ones I mean, the ones that are well and truly terrified. She takes them firmly and establishes control, gives them something to believe in. She reminds me of you in that way. You have different styles obviously. Yours is a quiet strength borne of experience and a sense of slyness (yes, slyness Sister - don't think we all haven't seen your smile as you deliver a double edged comment). You are well missed, not just by me, but by everyone. Don't tell her I told you, but I even heard Sister Evangelina promise a new nurse you'd set her straight when you returned. This poor woman must be exhausted of hearing everyone prattle on endlessly about you….

The third:  
… Sister Julienne and I were up half the night trying to put everything together for board meeting and the first question they asked when we arrived was "where's the Scottish one?", needless to say, you've made a friend for life in Sir Derrick Jerrod. It was funny how often you came up in conversation. She was telling me about the first time she met you - did you really work three days on a broken ankle until it turned black? You stubborn, stubborn woman. You of all people should know the risk of nerve and tissue damage. Is this stubbornness something I'll have to get used to? Why do doctors and nurses make the worst patients? I hope you're listening to them over at St. Ann's and not riding roughshod over them. You are one of the best professionals I've ever worked with, but I worry what kind of patient that makes you. We need you to recover quickly. (If she tries hard, she can make out what it says under the scribbles) I need you to recover quickly….

The fourth:  
…I watched the sun come up today across London this morning from the rooftop. It was - a hard night, we lost both mother and child. I never want to have that conversation with a partner again, that poor man. There is nothing worse than going home alone for the first time, everything where it was left, waiting for everyone to come back - but they won't, they'll never be again. I thought of you and somehow it made me feel better. It's not the cruelty of life but the indifference - does that make sense? Again, it's only thinking of you and what you'd say that assuages me. I don't know why I'm writing this to you. My comfort comes in the act of writing and in the thought that you don't open them. It's that which lets me tell you that I miss you like I miss Sarah, and that no longer confuses me as it once did.

On happier news, we're to have a wedding at Nonnatus. Our very own Camilla 'Chummy' something-something-something-Fortescue-Brown is to be Camilla 'Chummy' something-something-something-Fortescue-Brown-Noakes later this summer and we all hope you'll be able to attend…

The sixth:  
…Do you ever read something you've read a hundred times and find something new? Something you've missed all these times? Well, maybe you do. I hear songs that I've heard since I was a child, and I hear them now as if for the first time. Does that make sense? It probably doesn't. It's been a long day. Tim is asleep, and I should be too but I can't sleep. Does that make sense? It probably doesn't. I must sound like a crazy person. If I'm this bad now, I can barely imagine what I'll be like in four hours when I have to get up. We are mad to put ourselves through this, I often think in the darker hours. I wonder why we don't chuck it all in and open up a private practice, adopt office hours and take bank holidays off. Like love, it must be a particular kind of madness that infects us…

The ninth:  
…"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach." I hope you enjoyed the book - I wasn't sure what they had in terms of reading material and my friend Suzannah suggested this. I confess, this may be one of the few times where the movie rivalled the book. I know it's blasphemous and sacrilegious for anyone to prefer the film to the book, but I do. I can and will say it loud and proud. Not due to any shortcomings of the book, but rather to the strength of the film. Feel free to deride me in any way you see fit in your next letter (that was a joke) (probably not a very good one)…

The eleventh:  
This is Tim, thank you very much for my letter. Dad even let me stay up late that night to read it. The part with the pudding was very funny, but I am sad it was chocolate pudding because chocolate pudding is the best to eat. Summer holiday is coming up and I get to go with Granny and Grandpa Parker to the shore where I can play with my cousins. I hope that when I come back, you will be back from hospital and …

The twelfth:  
… Sister Julienne has told us the good news, you'll be well enough to be discharged to the mother house (whatever that is). Congratulations. I half hope this letter doesn't reach you and that you've already left and I half hope that it does reach you, the last letter. I have fooled myself in the appropriateness of writing to a friend in the hospital, but not even my powers of delusion will extend to write to you in the mother house. I have made no efforts at concealing my regard for you, except the depth of it. I have no words left that I can share without knowing where you stand. Do I say too much or not enough? With that, I leave my heart with with you to do with as you see fit. Please know, wherever you stand, you will always have a devoted friend in me…

She re-read each one over and over until the sun went down and it was time for dinner. Then she re-read them once more, running her fingertips over certain lines as lovingly as if they were his own hand. She squints and struggles to read his scrawl on some passages. She can all but hear his voice, rich, reciting the words. So many lines, so many words, but not one of them was the word she was looking for.

Twelve.

Twelve letters.

Each signed off with 'Yours, P. Turner'.

Well, she thinks to herself, too giddy to sleep, they'll soon see if he's well and truly hers.

* * *

 **AN:** brief note - I stole a line from Jane Austen's Persuasion. That brilliance is not mine... Shocker, I know.


	16. I KnowI Think

There's a man I know  
I think he loves me so  
Finally  
I'm going away  
\- Sylvan Esso, Come Down

* * *

She is grateful to be alone this morning.

She knows she's not alone, not truly, God is with her. She hopes he is with her. She hopes and prays that what she feels is his guidance and that she has made the right choice. She hopes and prays for so many things as she rises from her bed and kneels for her morning prayers. Will she still do this tomorrow? Will she still do this next week? Next month? She takes a deep breath and rises. It won't do to start today with so many doubts. She has made the choice to place her trust in both the Lord and herself that this is the right choice, and now she has to see it through.

It's before dawn, but she cannot sleep anymore, she cannot stay still.

She hums a song she doesn't know the words to, having only heard it softly playing from the other side of the room the nights her roommate couldn't sleep. She showers and then awkwardly tries to dry her hair carefully. She looks at herself in the steamy mirror - her golden hair bronzed while wet - will she get used to looking at herself like this, bareheaded? Of course she will, she tries to convince herself, just as she had gotten accustomed to the sight of herself wearing the cap? She runs her fingers through her hair, trying to recall how to style it. How did she style it all those years ago? She makes a half-hearted effort then admits to herself that she has mostly forgotten how to do it, having gotten accustomed to tucking it under her surgical cap or her veil. She gives up, frustrated, and plaits it quickly. She won't succumb to vanity - not before dawn anyways. She wraps the towel around herself tighter as she handles the package that arrived for her yesterday. It was soft and small - clothes to change into. She knows this isn't a big moment, except it is. Her stomach churns with anticipation. It feels so very much like the morning she left her father's house to move to London all those years ago. Like the morning she left her dormitory for the last time. Like she is on the verge of something life altering. It's the moments filled with anticipation before the event we remember most - the calm before the storm.

She can't help but laugh at herself just a little - it's just some clothes she's holding, that's all.

She opens the package, unable to recall what exactly she wore before she was Sister Bernadette, but is relieved to find it isn't as bad as she thought. A pair of black cotton leggings, a too-large grey knit sweater - one she had stolen from her father so many years ago. She takes it into her arms and inhales - it doesn't smell of dust or age as she expected, but of freshly done laundry. One of the Sisters must have washed it for her. She tries not to tear up, but rather sends a silent thank you to whichever one it was that did her that small kindness. She slips on the clothes and stares at herself in the mirror - thankful for the extra fabric of the sweater to hide some of the curves on display from the leggings. Looking in the mirror, she's struck by how much younger she looks, as if the last 10 years of her life never happened. She tugs at the sleeves then folds them up. She doesn't recognise herself - which is silly - it's only a change of clothes, a change of hair. She's still the same woman, isn't she? She looks at herself, half expecting an answer from her reflection and finally gives up when the reflection in the mirror doesn't respond back.

She packs up what few belongings she has into her small bag, placing her letters and her book from the Doctor on the very top. She sets the bag down on the floor and sits on the edge of the bed and waits. It's only seven and she won't be discharged until after she sees her doctor at ten.

So she lays herself back down on top of the covers and waits.

* * *

She is given a clean bill of health and instructions for rest and makes her way back to her room for the last time.

She picks up the phone and dials the number she shouldn't know off by heart and tries not to cry out when she hears that familiar voice on the other end. "I'm being discharged." She all but whispers, her voice caught in her throat.  
"Sister Bernadette?"  
"I'm supposed to go to Chichester but I won't." She grows stronger saying these words, articulating out loud what she had only dreamt about.  
"Why…why is that?" His voice sounds hesitant on the other end of the line. As if he's scared. As if he's hopeful.  
"I thought," She begins to explain, thankful to finally have the words to express herself, even if it took all these months for her to find them, "For a long time, that I was in the wrong place. I wasn't. I was just living the wrong life." She hopes he can read between her words as she read between his.  
"I wrote to you." He says, shy and wounded. Her heart strains against her chest. Oh Lord, does she love this man, this sweet, gentle man.  
"Yes." She can't tell him over the phone about the whys of her silence, of her apparent coldness towards his letters. She can only hope that her calling him, reaching out to him is enough to help them move forward.  
"I…" Again, that voice that's equal parts hopeful and terrified. "I don't know if I said too much or not enough."  
"You said what was necessary." She admits, smiling despite herself. He had left so much unsaid, but then so had she, and still they understood each other, found each other through their wordlessness. "I'm coming back to Poplar." She cannot bring herself to say home, she no longer has one. "Today. There are things I need to do. Procedures."  
"Today? It'll be months before you're fully recovered. You need to rest."  
"I need to be back. I've had enough rest to wake the dead." She feels stirrings of who she once was grow within her, stubborn and right. "I finally know my own mind and I can't tell you how exciting that is! I have to go now - I have to catch the bus."  
"You are not taking the bus, Sister Bernadette! I can be there in an hour." She can hear his voice change, exactly how she imagined he would speak to her in one of her letters about working on her broken ankle.  
"I'm sorry Doctor, but I don't answer to that name anymore." And there it is - she says this with pride and a little bit of strength. If she hadn't made it clear - if her clothes, and her call hadn't expressed enough, this should do it. She can hear a sound on the other end of the line and a heavy sigh. "One moment." She hears him lower the phone and a familiar voice. "I'll be right there." He murmurs before he places his phone back to his ear. "I'm sorry. I really am." He knows she's heard it. "Duty calls."  
"I understand." Her heart breaks a little, but she also understands. This is real life, and he's at work, and as selfish as it is to want to see him as soon as humanly possible, he is still Doctor Turner, ready to go save the day. She hangs up before either of them can say anything else. She doesn't need him - she wants him, oh how she wants him, but she doesn't need him.

* * *

It took everything he had to focus at the patient in his OR. He was a nervous bundle of energy, having to steady himself before he began. He had waited to hear from her, he had waited for all these months, and suddenly out of the blue, she called him on a random Thursday morning saying she was coming home. Well, not exactly home, but she was coming back. And she was no longer… no. It wouldn't do to get his hopes up like this he warns himself. Still, he cannot help beaming through his surgical mask the whole morning.

The team makes it through the surgery in record time, mother and baby both safe, and it's Nurse Chummy (much easier for patients and staff alike to remember that then her litany of last names) who asks if everything is alright and suggests they call in the next Doctor to come in early. He can't argue or even feel a little sorry for Dr Crane, he's covered for her a fair many times himself and the sooner he leaves, the sooner he can see Sister Bernadette. He makes a sad excuse of the long night shift taking it's toll and heads to his office to gather his overcoat and … his son. It was a school holiday and Tim was with him. He can't help but laugh at this as he collects their belongings and moving them quickly through to the parking lot - whatever romantic notions he had of sweeping her off her feet would be delayed by his sleep deprived self and his son in the backseat of the car reading Harry Potter for the 17th time.

* * *

She remembers, too late, that now that she is responsible for her own decisions, she is also responsible for their outcome. In this case it's being stuck even further away from London. It's a small blessing that the grey skies above have only threatened to rain - but lost, in the wilds of the countryside (how are there even wilds of countryside this near London in this day and age she would like to know) small blessings are all that she has.

She chooses to see this as a sign that she is on the right track if not the right path - things are going to get hard from here on out now that she has stepped out into the great unknown. If she can't navigate back to…the East end, how can she navigate anything else that comes her way? Besides, she thinks to herself, throwing her shoulders back in a false show of confidence, she's a Scot, she's faced harsher conditions than this on her walks to pick up the post.

And so, she soldiers on.

* * *

"Wait… you're telling me we're looking for Sister Bernadette, but I can't call her Sister Bernadette?"  
"Well… yes."  
"Then what do I call her?" Tim asks, his book cast off to one side.  
"I don't know Tim, I'll have to ask her."  
"You don't know a lot today, don't you?"  
"Cheek Timothy." He warns his son, fighting the smile that threatens to burst out of him. He can't help himself, even with the fog, with the panic of arriving at St. Ann's and finding her gone - he had waited for the chance to speak to her, to see her, and he wasn't about to be stopped or have his spirits dampened by her getting on the wrong bus. He will find her and then… well… He'll find her.

Tim, for his part, was taking this surprisingly well. With the fog that had rolled in around the car, it was a little like Ron and Harry in the car flying to Hogwarts. This whole morning was a little bit like an adventure out of a book - it began like an ordinary day but here he was in the car with his father on a quest to find a missing nun who was not a nun. It was all a little exciting really. He rolled his window down and stuck his head out the window. "Tim, what are you doing? Get back in here!" His father shouts at him, waving an arm in his direction, trying to get him back into the car. "You can see better out here dad!" He shouts back, batting his father's arm away. "What shall I shout when I see her? When I see her, shall I shout 'Stop Sister Bernadette'? Except she's not called that anymore, is she?" He sits back down, thinking this problem over. It was all well and good to hang out the side of a car but what was the point if they didn't have a code name.  
"No Tim, she's not. And leave the talking to me." Dr. Turner stalls for a moment. He never thought he'd have to have this conversation with Tim, not like this, not at all. "Tim, you…you know I love you right? You're the best part of my life."  
"Yeah…" Tim answers, uncertain where this is going.  
"And I will always love mum. She will always be your mum. You know that, right?"  
"Right…" Again with the uncertain answer.  
"Well - I just want you to know that. That I will always love you, and I will always love mum. And even if I were to, I don't know, maybe like another lady - "  
"Or man, like Lizzie's dads."  
"Well, yes, or man, but not quite" He gets flusters and decides to give in, he can only have one tricky conversation at a time with his son and human sexuality was definitely not the one he wanted to have this morning. "Even if I were to start to like another person, it doesn't mean I would ever love you any less, or they could ever, ever replace your mum. You know that, right Tim?"  
"Yes dad, I know that." He answers solemnly, trying to copy the same seriousness his father was talking to him with. Of course he knows his father will always love his mum, and of course he knows she will always be his mum - even if he wanted to start dating or kissing another man or lady, they could never be his mum… especially if they were a man. Maybe. This was getting confusing and he doesn't quite know what this has to do with Sister Bernadette. He wishes he could talk this over with Lizzie. She would know what to do. "What I'm trying to say Tim, is that…well I love you." He can see the look on his father's face - it's the look he gets when he stops arguing with Nana Parker but he doesn't want to.  
"Dad," Tim places a firm hand on his father's shoulder from the back seat, "I love you too."  
"Good."  
"I'm going to stick my head out the window again now." Tim says, still with the seriousness beyond his years.  
"Just be careful son."  
"Will do dad."

Dr. Turner sighs. Let the boy have a little fun, a treat for putting up with his muddled thoughts and near frantic actions, he thinks to himself - they haven't seen another car for miles and it's a small country road. They haven't seen another car for miles and Sister Bernadette was out there somewhere. What if he's on the wrong road? What if he can't find her? He's about to turn around, ready to try the other exit of the roundabout they passed some five minutes ago when Tim starts shouting, "Dad, dad, I see someone! I think it's her!" He strains his eyes, trying to see what his son is yelling about - there in the distance is a slim figure. He guns the car until he pulls up just behind and watches for a moment as the woman stops. He can't quite make himself get out of the car - he doesn't even know if this is her, and if it is, he doesn't know what he would say, could say, that he hasn't said before, more eloquently with pen and paper. What if he's gone too far? What if his emotion is one-sided? Questions and hesitations run through his mind, keeping him rooted in his seat watching the figure before him stop and wait a moment. He wills her to turn around. If she turns around everything will be alright.

He just needs her to turn around.

* * *

She's so lost in her thoughts that she doesn't hear the shouts or the engine revving to meet her until it's right behind her and it stops. She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, praying it's him and knowing it can't be. He is still on shift. Still, she is in no position to turn down the kindness of strangers at this moment, lost and stuck in the middle of nowhere.

She turns around. 

* * *

AN: This chapter has a little bit more a religious bent than I meant, but I mean, she is a nun renouncing religious life, so…  
¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	17. Here it Comes

Listen, the birds sing  
Listen, the bells ring…  
The war is over and we are beginning  
Here it comes  
Here comes the first step  
\- Stars

* * *

She turns around.

That's all he needs to see before he throws open the door and runs to close the distance between them, pulling up short to look at her, really look at her. She looks paler then when he last saw her, but her cheeks are flushed red and her eyes shine bright behind her glasses - this is a different woman before him than the one he saw slipping into Nonnatus all those months ago. It's not the change of attire and the cap she always wore - it's something else, something deeper within her. Something fundamental has shifted in her and God, is she beautiful - was she always this beautiful? "What if it had started raining?" He asks, the words out of his mouth before he knows it. "What if you had gotten lost?" He gently lays the back of his hand across her forehead to get a rough temperature. He doesn't know how desperate he was to touch her until his skin connects with hers and suddenly all becomes right in his world. She's burning up despite the chill, but it reassures him she's alive. She's here. She's real. "I was was lost. I got the wrong bus." She admits wryly, trying not to smile at the admission. She just wants to keep looking at him and looking at him. She doesn't think she'll ever get tired of looking at him. Or the warmth she feels as he looks at her. Absence has not dulled their desire for the other's company and attention. Here they are after all these months apart and they are still so aware of one another. So in tune. They can't or won't look away from one another as he slips his battered coat off his shoulders and wraps it around her thin frame, holding it closed at her neck. "I was on the right road." He offers, smiling at her. She takes a deep breath, relishing in the sensation of his coat, still warm from his body. She can smell the remnants of his aftershave, his sleepless nights, and even a hint of his cigarettes. She imagines this is what it would be like to be in his arms. After all these months, she's tired of imagining what it would be like to live - she wants to actually experience it. "I know you so little but I couldn't be more certain." She speaks, her lips curving upwards, her eyes shining up at him.  
"I am completely certain." He confesses, helpless against the sight of her. "I don't even know your name."  
"Shelagh."  
"Patrick."  
"There." She sighs, content for a moment. "We've made a start."

They stand there, looking at each other, cataloguing every detail that was denied to them all this time. Shelagh, for her part, can't help but feel deliriously happy just being near him while Patrick is incredulous that this is happening. "Patrick?" She finally speaks, and he swears right there and then that nothing will ever sound sweeter than the lilt of her voice as she says his name.  
"Yes dear?"  
"Dear?" She teases softly.  
"Dearest." He steps closer to her, his hand resting on her sternum, still grasping the collars of his coat.  
"Dearest." She repeats, blushing at his endearments, "Is…that Tim in the car?"  
"Tim! Yes!" He turns around for a moment and waves to his son, who waves back, eagerly watching everything from the backseat. "School holiday, he was with me at the hospital."  
"I see." She waves to the small boy who enthusiastically waves back. "Care to give me a ride back to London, Dr. Turner?"  
"I would love nothing more." He reluctantly releases his hold on his coat and takes her bag from her hand and gallantly offers her his arm. She laughs, but blushes once more as she takes it and leans into him.

Tim falls asleep in the back of the car shortly after they've started their drive back to the city. She can see exhaustion on every line of Patrick's face, every curve of his body. She can't get enough of looking at him. She has waited for this for so long and now that it's here, she refuses to waste a single moment. "It's awfully distracting, you know." He grins at her. "The way you're looking at me."  
"I'm sorry Patrick. I just…I missed you."  
"I missed you too. I kept wondering how I could miss someone I…"  
"Never really had?" She completes his thought. "I felt the same way."  
"I keep thinking this is - crazy. Then I look at you, or think about you and Shelagh, I just…" He looks at her for a moment, unable to find the right words to express what goes on in his mind and his body. The strain of his heart against his ribs. The shortness of his breath.  
"I know." She looks down at his free hand on the console between them and lays her hand beside his, almost but not quite touching. She suspects that once she touches him, she'll not be able to stop, and no matter what she may be feeling or thinking, she's still Sister Bernadette, at least for the time being. "When we get to the city, can you drop me at Nonnatus house?"  
"Certainly. I thought you weren't staying there."  
"I'm not. But there are some things I need to do." Her stomach drops at the thought. No matter how happy she was, or is, the thought of no longer being with her Sisters terrifies her - it's all she's known for the last ten years.  
"Procedures?" He asks, not wanting to press her.  
"Yes."  
"And then?"  
"Oh." She sighs. "I don't know. I have to find a place to live I suppose."  
"Stay with us."  
"Patrick." She chastises him softly. "That's very sweet, but not very practical, now is it?"  
"Why not?"  
"You're a father, what would Timothy think?"  
"Timothy would think it's a great idea." A sleepy voice from the back chimes in. "Are we there yet?"  
"Not quite, back to sleep, Sir." Shelagh comments, smiling at him from the rearview mirror. "Patrick, it's a lovely offer - but I'm…I was a nun. I can't quite 'shack up' with you my first day out."  
"I'm not suggesting 'shacking up' Shelagh," Patrick laughs, "I would take the couch and you can have the bed. I am a friend who is offering you a place to stay while we figure things out. At least think about it."  
"We?" She asks, blushing. They hadn't talked about the future. Or their feelings towards one another. Not in any real capacity. He had written and written and written and she had longed and longed and longed. But practicalities were never discussed. "If you'd like." He suggests carefully, a false air of the casual about him. "To be a we."  
"I…I think I'd like." She blushes, looking away to watch the buildings grow as they speed towards London.

She hooks her pinky finger with Patrick's. Shelagh gives Sister Bernadette that parting gift.

* * *

She takes a deep breath to calm her nerves. She's shaking and crying and goodness knows what she looks like to those who pass by.

This is it.

This is the last time she'll walk through the doors of what was once her home. She doesn't even get a chance to say goodbye to Sister Monica Joan, or Sister Evangelina - all of whom are out for the day. Even her goodbye to Sister Julienne was heartbreakingly quick - a too-brief hug after the forms signed and possessions returned and then out the door - if Sister Julienne recognised the battered trench wrapped around Shelagh's shoulders, she didn't say anything. She makes her way down the short steps and takes one last look up at what was once her home. She didn't think she would feel this lost, this adrift after. Her thumb brushes over the bare spot where her ring once was. Her hand feels lighter and not quite right. She takes another deep breath and begins down the road. The rain has held off here in the city and despite the fog, it is a mild day - the only reason Patrick didn't argue much about leaving her at Nonnatus instead of waiting for her.

She navigates the streets, invisible for once amongst others in her forgettable clothes - it's been so long since she blended in to the crowd. She is thankful for the time alone to calm herself down before seeing Patrick. Patrick. Her stomach flips at the thought of his name. How had she gone this long without saying his name? She can't help but smile and blush as she finds herself nestling deeper in his coat. It suits him so much. Patrick. She refuses to think of the practical things she knows she must. She promises herself one day to just…live before she worries and gets lost in her thoughts and fears. She wants to be able to savour this day with Patrick and with Tim - it was all she had wanted for months and months and will now relish in it. She navigates the streets, familiar to her, turning here and there until she ends up at Patrick's. She didn't realise he lived so close to Nonnatus, and wonders how it was that they never crossed paths before. She offers up a silent thanks to God for letting their paths cross now - she is becoming more comfortable with the idea that everything that she went through was a necessity to get to this point, that it was part of the divine plan for her life. Their lives. Her stomach flips once more at the thought as she rings the the bell for their flat and is let in by an eager Tim announcing "Fifth Floor!".

She glances at herself in the brief elevator ride up to the fifth floor - trying to smooth her hair and wipe the last of the tears away. Her nose is red and her eyes are puffy and she wishes for a moment she had something prettier to wear than her father's old jumper but at the same time, she can't imagine anything more comforting than this sweater and this coat, both engulfing her and grounding her from floating away - her past and her hopeful future. The elevator doors glide open and she gets out and she takes a left and finds their flat, the door left ajar - still she knocks before she pokes her head in. "Hello?" She calls out, not quite stepping in. "Dad - she's here!" Tim shouts, bounding into the room. "Can I take your coat?" He asks, a proper gentleman.  
"Well, seeing as how it's your father's, I suppose I should return it from whence is came from." She grins as she steps in.  
"Oh, I don't know…" Patrick replies, coming out of a side room, "It looks much better on you, I dare say."  
"Flattery, doctor?"  
"Honesty." He shrugs, bashful. They stay for a moment like that before he takes another step forward and brushes his lips across her cheek, a hand hovering, but not quite touching her hip for balance. "Hello."  
"Hello." She murmurs back, eyes closed. He smells delicious - freshly showered, scrubbed and shaved, his hair still damp - and she would give anything for that hand to take her hip. He steps back, much to their regret, and wordlessly slips his coat off her shoulders. "How did it go?"  
"It went." She demurs, eyes flicking towards Tim, carefully watching their interactions. "How did it go here?"  
"Dad made me shower and clean up my room." Tim answers, shooting his father an unimpressed look.  
"Oh, the horror of it." She teases, remembering bath time being a particularly dreaded activity in her youth. "Well, you both smell lovely, very clean."  
"I'm going to start dinner - I was holding off until you got here, I realised…. I don't know what you like. Pasta?"  
"Sounds perfect - I can help."  
"It's been a long day for you Shelagh -" A thrill at using her name. To be standing here, in his hall, using her name  
"I'm not the one who's been up all night Patrick."  
"And I'm not the one who's been in hospital." He smiles his lopsided at her and she's lost - ready to concede anything and everything to this man. "Please, rest a little? There's not a lot I can make properly, but this I can handle." Let me do this, he wordlessly asks, let me take care of you the way I couldn't before. He sees her purse her lips and finally agree. "I'll put on the kettle - Tim, did you want to show Shelagh the flat?"  
"Sure. This is the hall." Tim begins, taking his role very seriously. "Home to our shoes and coats. To our right, the kitchen. If we go down the hall we have dad's room. You'll notice the door is closed because it's very messy."  
"Oh, is it now?" She asks as she shoots Patrick an amused grin over her shoulder. "And what about your room Tim? Spotless?"  
"Yes well, moving right along." He heads down the hall towards the large living room  
"Oh, I could get used to having ally against his cheek, Shelagh." Patrick whispers in her ear, from behind, watching as she closes her eyes at his proximity and exhales softly.  
"I should catch up to him." She softly speaks, opening her eyes. He's struck by the brilliance of their blue. She really is painfully beautiful, he thinks to himself watching her follow his son.

It begins to rain outside during Timothy's detailed tour of the flat, which culminates in his room, a bright blue on the walls and books on every available surface. "Much cleaner than I expected Tim." She teases, watching him flop down on his bed.  
"Thanks, Dad made me clean it up before you came." He shrugs. "If you'd like, you can borrow a book while we wait for dinner."  
"Thank you Tim," She smiles from the doorway. "I may just pop into the kitchen and see if I can help your father - there were a few sounds that didn't quite fill me with confidence." She confesses. "Thank you for showing me around."  
"You're welcome." He watches from the bed and she gets the feeling there's something he's not saying. She tries to remember being his age - of being filled with questions and thoughts and feelings and not knowing how to express them. It felt like the adults were always speaking a silent language she could never quite understand. "Tim…can I sit down?"  
"Sure." He shrugs, so she enters the room and sits on the floor by his bed so they're eye level. "Today's been a pretty busy day, hasn't it?"  
"I guess."  
"You know if you have any questions, you can always ask me or your father? I mean, it's…" She sighs, "It's scary when things change, even if it is exciting or fun."  
"I guess. What if…" He begins then pauses to rethink his words. "What if the feelings are opposite?"  
"That's a normal thing. We can be happy and sad at the same time. Or excited and scared. Confused and curious."  
"Those are a lot of feelings."  
"They are." She admits, "They're just some of the feelings I'm feeling right now."  
"What if…I'm happy that I get to see you more, now that you're not Sister Bernadette but sad too, because I liked Sister Bernadette. And I liked it being dad and me. Not like you should leave - it's just…I don't know."  
"Those are a lot of feelings too." She repeats back to him, smiling. "I'm glad I get to see more of you too Tim. Because I really like you - you're clever and kind and funny. Just because I'm not called Sister Bernadette anymore doesn't mean I've changed. In a lot of ways I'm still the same person." She takes a pause and a breath, she always seems to need a moment before she talks about her mother. "Did I ever tell you that my mum died when I was about your age?" She sees his interest piqued. "And I miss her every day - I do. After my brother moved away, it was just me and my dad. We did everything together. We didn't talk a lot. We were just sort of quiet together, does that make sense?" He nods. "I would never, ever want to take time away from you and your dad - but I would like to spend some time with you both." She sees his mind mulling over her words. "We can even have a little code word, you know, something so you can tell me if you ever feel left out, or want some time with your father - and I promise I won't be hurt - not even a little - if you use it."  
"Really?"  
"Really Tim. Your father and I have a lot to talk about, but you're our number one priority." She feels him examining her, looking for any possibility of deception, so she lets him. She remembers how scary change was at that age and wants him to trust her because she feels like she could so desperately love him if she let herself. A knock on the wall pulls both of their attention - Patrick in an apron stands there smiling at them both and Shelagh suspects he may have heard more than she wanted him to. "Dinner's almost ready. Tim, can you help me set the table?"  
"Shelagh's taller." He grumbles, shooting her a sly smile.  
"Not by much." She teases back, ruffling his hair as he heads out the room. "Why don't you show me where everything is and we can do it together?" She pushes herself up off the ground and catches Patrick still watching her. "Patrick, he's wonderful."  
"He's his mother."  
"He's you." She counters, watching him blush.

Dinner goes smoothly, with Tim and Patrick doing most of the talking and the music in the background taking care of any lulls in the conversation. Outside it's cold and rainy, but inside it's warm and comfortable and Shelagh feels out of place only because it feels so natural to be here. To sit across from Patrick at this small table. To watch him openly. To all but feel his knees against hers under the table. To see his hand lay on the table, almost reach out for hers only to pull back. She feels guilty at enjoying herself so much, for only missing her Sisters at Nonnatus just a little. Dinner is soon finished and she offers to clear the table in Tim's place half to talk to Patrick and half to say thank you to him for setting the table.

She collects the plates and is moving them to the kitchen, she catches herself humming and she can't help but frown - she has always loved music - it's always been proof of God's existence that sounds can fill her with such wholeness and wonder. She wonders if she has any right to those feeling now. "You don't have to do that Shelagh."  
"I can do this just as easily as you can Patrick, besides you cooked. You must be exhausted - long day for you."  
"But I wouldn't change a moment of today."  
"Neither would I." She rinses off the last of the dishes before popping them in the dishwasher. "Patrick?" She asks, not moving away from the sink.  
"Yes?"  
"I know we have a lot to talk about, but I don't want to talk about it today. Is…is that alright?"  
"Whenever you're ready Shelagh, I'm here."  
"That said - I have…I have to say something and it's something very forward." She can't make herself look at him. She can't believe she's about to say this.  
"What is it, Shelagh? You can tell me anything. Have I done something or said something to make you uncomfortable?"  
"No, no - the opposite of that. Patrick. I…" She bites her lip. "You can touch me, Patrick." There. She's said it. Just saying it is enough to make her skin tingle at the thought. "I see you come close then stop. You can touch me, if you'd like." She finally has the courage to look at him. She hasn't had human touch given freely after her mother fell ill - now she doesn't know what has broken within her, but she craves it. She craves his hands on her. She has to battle herself not to touch them, father and son alike, to reassure herself that she can. To reassure herself that she is here. She is Shelagh and she is here. "Unless you'd rather not. Then I'm - "  
"Of course I do." He admits from his position leaning against the counter. "I just…I don't want to be too much. Too assertive. I know you're not Sister Bernadette any longer, but I look at you and I want to - God I want to touch you and all I see is you turning away."  
"Patrick, I'm so sorry."  
"No, I'm sorry. I know why you had to. I just…never want to put you in a position like that again."  
"It killed me," She confesses, moving towards him. "It killed me to hurt you like that. All I wanted was to stay there. Stay with you." She offers up her palm towards him once more and after a moment, he takes it and places another kiss to it. Firmer this time. Claiming her palm as his own. He wants nothing more of her than this. Than to be able to touch her hand, her shoulder her face, her hair without guilt or recrimination. Stronger than the desire to hold her body against his, to make love to her (and yes, it will be love because he knows of no other word that would come close to describing his emotions towards her) is the desire to just touch her, feel her soft skin beneath the rough pads of his fingers until he knows every ridge and valley and scar and freckle. "I listened to this song an awful lot while you were away." He admits, recognising the song playing.  
"Did you now?"  
"I did. Do you know it?"  
"Hmmmmm…" She mulls it over before she begins to whisper/sing along, her clear voice contrasting against Louis Armstrong's. "Dear Lord above, send back my love." In her mouth the words sound like a prayer, one familiar to the both of them. They tangle their fingers together and Patrick steps closer to her, ready to take her in his arms to dance with. He has had this dream for so long he can't believe that she's here and - "DAAAD! I'M READY FOR BED!"

They step back from each other, fingers still intwined, breathing laboured.

"I'll be right there!" He calls back. swallowing some of his desire down.  
"CAN SHELAGH TUCK ME IN?"  
"It seems I'm not the only Turner enamoured with you. Do you mind?" He asks with a shrug. He tries not to notice the darkening of her blue eyes, the blush on her cheeks. She blushes so easily. He tries not to think about if her cheeks are the only things that blush rosy pink.  
"I'll be right there!" She calls out. "Anything I should know?"  
"Make sure he brushed his teeth - usually he just dabs toothpaste on his tongue for the smell."  
"Clever. Wish I thought of that at his age." They finally let go of each other's hand and she leaves the kitchen.


	18. Here Comes the First Step

True to his word, Tim is in bed, night light on, book in hand. "Do you normally go to bed this early Tim?" She asks, glancing at the clock - quarter to eight.  
"Well, bed time is eight thirty, but it's been a long day and I want to finish reading this chapter."  
"And you think if you have us tuck you in before we'll forget to check on you?" She asks, seating herself on the edge of the bed. "I've been your age before, Sir. I know a few things." She tenderly bushes back some of his hair and sees him smile at the act. "Show me your teeth. Did you brush?" He grimaces to show her his teeth and nods.  
"You're really good at this." He points out.  
"Like I said, I know a thing or two." She adjusts the blankets around him. "Sweet dreams." She closes her eyes for a moment and says a prayer for him.  
"Shelagh - will you be here in the morning?"  
"Would you mind very much if I were?"  
"Can you make breakfast? Dad isn't very good at it. Maybe you can spend the day with me? It's half-term."  
"I'll see what I can do." She kisses two of her fingertips and places them on the tip of his nose - a long forgotten act of affection her father used to do every night to her. "Don't stay up too late." She murmurs before rising and turning off the main lights and shutting his door.

She makes her way quietly towards the living room where Patrick stands looking out in the rainy night, glass of wine in his hand. "Hello you." She greets him softly holding her hand out to him.  
"Hello you." He repeats, slipping his hand not in hers, but gently across her back, drawing her body close to his side. "Is this ok?"  
"Very much so." She answers back after a moment, eyes still closed, still relishing the sensations, practically giddy at the feel of his hand heavy on her hip. There is an odd feeling that no harm could ever come to her as long as she stays tucked in against his side. It's so contrary to everything she's ever been taught or felt or believed but here it is. "Is…is that a record player Patrick?" She asks, her open eyes finally roaming around the room, landing on the source of the music.  
"Yes well, they're very in now according to Trixie." He laughs.  
"Well I guess it's true - everything comes back in style if you wait long enough." She teases. "Play me something?"  
"What would you like?"  
"Surprise me." She doesn't know who she is - this flirting, teasing woman nestled beside this handsome man - she'd say she's playing a part, but it's nearly effortless to her to be with Patrick like this. It's like it was always meant to be.  
"Alright…" He hands her the wine glass - sad in some small part to be away from her, even if it's just a few moments - and begins to flip through a stack of albums. "I didn't know if you wanted wine, there's a glass on the table if you'd like."  
"It tastes better from your glass." She responds, taking a small sip. Caution has gone out the window, for one night at least. She can't help but think of another time she shared something of his. "It's going to be like that, is it woman? What's mine is yours?" He grins over his shoulder before placing the selected album on the platter and starting the machine. "May I have this dance Shelagh?" He holds out his hand to her, a slight bow at the waist.  
"You may Patrick." She places their glass on the table and takes his hand, stepping close to him. He curls their hands towards his chest and splays his other across her back as they start to sway. She's so small here in his arms - he's always known she was slight - but after the illness and her absence he is even more aware of it. "I've wanted to do this for a very long time." He admits, his words half lost in her hair.  
"Have you?"  
"I know it was wrong, but I would just imagine what it would be like to look up across the table and see you there. To have you curled up against me on the sofa. To share a dance and a glass of wine exactly like this."  
"Well…" She begins, "Is it everything you thought it would be?"  
"No." He stops swaying and nudges her chin up to face him, he'll never tire of those blue eyes. "It's better."  
"Patrick, stop." She chides him, stepping closer, turning her face away to hide her smile. She's afraid she'll be a disappointment to him. She's afraid she's not living up to whatever ideals or ideas he had of her - but with every moment they exchange it seems that he is as enamoured as she is that they are both here. They begin to move once more, the song changes and she recognises the horns section. Shelagh doesn't even realise that she's humming, that she's pressed flush against Patrick until she can feel feel his chest rumble when he talks, "I've missed hearing your voice."  
"Oh." She stops humming, a familiar feeling of guilt creeping in despite her insistence at being joyful. Who is she to be so happy? To be dancing with a man, drinking wine, singing when she should be home with her Sisters. Why isn't she home? Why did she leave? Was it worth it? Would the love of a man and the fulfilment of her dreams ever be worth it? "Shelagh?" Patrick asks, stopping and stepping back, his hand sliding from her back to her hip, "Are you ok?"  
"Yes I…" She tries to look away when all she wants to do is look at him, curl up in his arms.  
"You don't have to lie. Do we need to stop?" He doesn't let go of her yet.  
"Patrick, we haven't done anything we need to stop."  
"But?"  
"But…" She can't help but look at him and her heart grows once more, the concern and care marking his face and his body as much as exhaustion. "I used to sing when I was happy. I was happy when I sang."  
"Shelagh, I'm so sorry I" He drops his hand from her and steps back, heartache crossing his face, "I thought you were happy - I'll -"  
"No, Patrick. I mean, yes, I'm happy." She steps towards him until they're as close as they were while dancing. "I am so incredibly happy Patrick. It's just…I used to sing for God. And now I've left God."  
"Thank goodness." He breathes a sigh of relief, wrapping her up in an immersive hug. She can feel the tension leave his body and she prays that they will one day reach a point in their relationship where he won't be afraid of her leaving, her breaking his heart. Doesn't he know she is his? She could only be his? "You haven't though, have you?" He asks. "Left God I mean. You've simply, I don't know…" He yawns. Loudly and deeply. "I'm sorry."  
"I don't know either Patrick." She admits, shrugging in his arms. "But, enough - you're exhausted. How long have you been up?"  
"I don't know… Thirty six or so?"  
"Thirty Six - Patrick Turner - to bed now."  
"Yes ma'am." He murmurs in her ear, his voice playful.  
"Patrick…" She warns, "What about work - didn't you have work tonight?"  
"I did." He admits, sheepish, dropping his arms and guiding Shelagh towards the bedroom, "I traded shifts for tomorrow. I couldn't miss your first day. I…missed you."  
"Good." She admits. "It's selfish, but I'm glad. I didn't want to not spend today with you." Her voice goes raw as they approach his bedroom.  
"Well…"  
"Well…" They stand in the doorway, neither wanting to move, afraid at the implications and what would and could and won't come next.  
"Let me get out some blankets for the couch and -"  
"May I shower before bed Patrick?"  
"Absolutely. It's um, just past the bed." He turns on the lights and invites her in. "Let me get some towels for you. Come in if you'd like?"  
"Thank you." She tries and fails in not being charmed by his daffy behaviour. She steps in and takes a look around - the room has a large window, the rest of the walls painted in a soft grey-blue, the colour of a foggy Sunday. There's heavy wooden furniture - a solid bed (she neither avoids or seeks looking at it, merely observing and passing her gaze onward), a dresser, a valet, a chair. It's cleaner than she would've expected, but then again, Tim did admit they cleaned prior to her arrival. Her eyes finally land on the room's occupant, holding out a stack of towels in his hands towards her. Carefully, as to not touch, as if she's back to being Sister Bernadette, she takes them from his hands and makes her way to the washroom where she closes the door.

The bathroom is bright and modern, white tiles, metal fixtures. She starts the water for the shower and a warm stream immediately pours down. She quickly sheds her clothes, careful to fold them up - they're her only clothes after all - and steps into the water. She sighs with contentment at the temperature and the pressure. Amongst the few things she won't miss from Nonnatus would be the ancient shower. She doesn't look down at her body as she bathes quickly - she knows her time recovering has changed it and she doesn't want to deal with what that could mean if and when should she and Patrick choose to… she can't even finish her thoughts, rather files that with all the other concerns she has put aside for tomorrow - right now she wants to shed any residue of the hospital, of her separation from Patrick. She reaches for his shampoo, his soap - a thrill passing through her at the thought of smelling like him, even in the slightest. She wonders who she is now. When did she become this person with these thoughts and desires? Were they always in her? A long buried part of Sister Bernadette or are they a part of a long slumbering Shelagh, who awoke in a thirty two year old's body? When she's clean enough and confused enough, she turns off the water and rather than reaching for the towels Patrick gave her, reaches for his bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. It smells like him, and so does she. She tugs it tighter around herself and then quickly dries her hair enough - it's at this moment she realizes she has forgotten her pyjamas. She thinks about asking Patrick to get them for her, but the idea of him going through her bag makes her feel funny. Her only other option is to step out herself. She opens the door and steps out to the empty bedroom - the lights are dimmed and Patrick is nowhere to be seen. "Patrick?" She calls out softly, to no response. She moves towards the door to get to her back but notices a pair of striped pyjamas neatly folded on the bed. She takes the top carefully - it's smooth and silky and cool against her warm skin after her shower. Her eyes dart up to the door where Patrick now stands, a half smile on his face. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wonders if that's the same dazed look of love and wonder she has on her face. "I wasn't sure if you needed a pair of pyjamas."  
"Thank you." She holds it tighter but doesn't move - to be fair, neither does he. "You keep staring at me Patrick."  
"It's nothing."  
"Patrick…" He'll never get tired of hearing her say his name, her accent softening the hard edged syllables until they're smooth. "Secrets aren't nice."  
"It's not a secret." He shrugs, walking in and moving to take a pillow from the bed.  
"No?" She challenges.  
"It's just… is it too forward to say you look like you belong? Here. With us. With me."

Her heart melts and every nerve in her body is alight. This is how she wants him to see her, not sick, or naive or sheltered or damaged. This is how she wants him to see her and this is how he's always seen her. That they are here, together, is incredible to her. It's a reminder of God's greatness and wisdom - every sleepless night and day of confusion is suddenly worthwhile just to see Patrick stand across from her. He looks so sheepish, so shy, looking out at her from under the flop of hair as though she was made of glass and light and wonder. Before she knows it, she finds herself in his arms, burying her face against his chest. She fits so perfectly here. Like it could be her home. "Is it too forward if I confess I feel like I could belong? With you? It's been an awful long time since I've belonged." He doesn't hear all the words, muddled as they are by his chest, but he can feel the emotions around them.  
"You smell nice."  
"I smell like you."  
"I like it." He tightens his arms around her and drops a soft kiss to her forehead.  
"So do I."

Restful.

It feels restful in his arms. For the first time in a long time, she feels like she is exactly where she needs to be. In his arms. And if feels so incredibly restful. She only moves when she feels him try to stifle a yawn. "Come, to bed with you."  
"I fixed up the couch outside. I figured…"  
"Oh."  
"So I'll just…take my pillow." He stoops to pick up the pillow he dropped when Shelagh burrowed herself in his arms. "I'll be outside if you need anything."  
"Thank you." She tugs the robe tighter.  
"Good night." He places another tender kiss on her forehead and something in her yearns for it to be more so she rises on her tiptoes, bare against the wooden floor and presses an electric kiss firm upon his lips, sighing when it's complete.  
"Good night." She whispers, stepping back.  
"Shelagh…" He groans, watching her take the top and head towards the bathroom once more, "You don't play fair."  
"No Patrick, I suppose I don't." She gets the same thrill of saying his name as she does when she hears him saying hers. A roll of her stomach, a contraction of the heart. A secret only they share. "You should probably get used to it." And with a smile she heads into the bathroom to change.

She slips the shirt on over her head, practically swimming in the extra material. On her it fits like a nightgown, hanging down near her knees. She laughs, looking at herself in the mirror. She looks like she's twenty once more. She feels like it too. She opens the door to the darkened room and quickly makes her way to the bed, shivering as she slides between the cool sheets. She is exhausted but unable to fall asleep. She tries not to imagine him on the other side of the bed. She tries not to want him there beside her. She tries not to want to wake up beside him. She lived how many years without this man - why was it so impossible now? Why was it suddenly necessary to have him here beside her? How was she going to adjust when he went to work tomorrow? To her not being here every night onward? Where would she even be if not here? Suddenly the bed and the room seem much lonelier, filling her with a sense of foreboding. This was what she was waiting for all day - the doubts that only come in the dark. She wants him here. She will always want him here - wherever here is. She will deal with the implications and complications of that tomorrow. She has decided not to deny any of her desires today, her first day, and she desires him beside her. She slips out from the covers and feels her way across the room towards the door and opens it slowly. The lights are still on and Patrick is sitting on the makeshift bed he's made of the couch reading. His ears alert from years of parenting, dart towards her. "Shelagh, is everything alright?" He tries not to look at her bare legs - by no means immodest, but still more of her than he's seen before.  
"Patrick, aren't you exhausted?"  
"I needed to wind down a little - busy day. What's wrong?"  
"Nothing."  
"Nothing?" He challenges.  
"It's just…I…Can you come to bed?"  
"Your bed?" He asks, blushing at the thought.  
"Your bed." She corrects, "I don't think I can sleep with you out here and so close and it's just to share the bed. I'm…I'm not ready for anything more." That much she's certain of (no matter how much she thinks she would one day like for it to be more). "Is that, is that alright?"  
"I hardly thought it was a come on from the woman who was a nun up until twelve hours ago, Shelagh." Patrick rises and crosses towards her.  
"Twelve hours." She repeats softly, it seems like so much longer than that.  
"Are you certain? I don't mind sleeping out here."  
"Well I do." She takes his hand in hers, the nightgown sleeve covering both of them. "Patrick, it's so silly but…every night I was alone, I would imagine, just for a second, what it would be like to fall asleep beside you. I would give myself that one moment to think of you even while I denied it every other minute of the day. Falling asleep without you seems - wrong now. Like I'm back there and I don't want to be back there." She's not certain if she's talking about the hospital or her mental state. She has never had more empathy for him than she does now - as vulnerable in voicing her desires as he was when he kissed her her palm. "I know it's forward, we haven't even spoken about what we'd like from each other or how we feel or what we want. I know we're unmarried and sharing a bed, but it's just sleep. A chance to rest. Unless you think it's too much, too aggressive, too…?" She bites her lip.  
"Shelagh, right now rest sounds heavenly." He raises a rough palm to her face and with his thumb eases her lip out from between her teeth. "At the risk of betraying the stereotypes of my gender - I'm not exactly ready for…that either."  
"You're not?"  
"Wine me and dine me before you use me for my body, woman." He teases, wrapping his arms around her. "To be honest, I was very lonely out here without you."  
"Is this what it feels like for others, Patrick?"  
"I don't know dear."

Together they shuffle off towards the bedroom. She's asleep before be can get into bed and he smiles as he removes her glasses, setting them down on the bedside table. He tries not to let his heart swell at this final moment of domesticity but he can't help it.

* * *

He wakes in that strange part of the day where it's not quite night and not quite morning. Everything is awash with the blue white light of the dawn - casting everything it touches with a calm glow. Even her hair looks silver and bronze in the watery light. His breath catches. She's here. She's here beside him. He wants to reach for her but is afraid of waking her. Afraid of what comes next. It could so easily be like this - but she's so young. He can see it even more clearly now, with her nestled on her stomach, facing him. There's none of the usual stress and uncertainty that lined her face during the waking hours - just a youthful ease. He doesn't think he's ever seen her without her glasses before. Her hand, in the valley of space between them - as if reaching for him - twitches. They haven't spoken about the age difference between them, but it's significant enough to know it could cause issues down the road. She is so young and so kind and so smart - every opportunity in the world is before her. He couldn't do that to her, hold her back but he couldn't make her choices for her either. He tries to talk himself down, ease the ache in his chest as he shifts to his side to watch her. It's going hurt if and when she leaves, so he is determined to memorise and hold on to every moment they have together. It's one of the many painful lessons he learned during Sarah's illness and death. It wasn't the big moments, their wedding, or their first date or Tim's first day of the school year he missed the most - it was the little things - the being late for work because she was in the bathroom, or her splashing him with water while doing the washing up. It was tripping over her shoes in the hall or accidentally drinking her tea - milky and sickly sweet. He's not a praying man but he offers up a silent plea to whatever deity for the chance to build up memories with Shelagh, to experience the little things with her. "Patrick," She whispers, "You're thinking too loudly." Her eyes flutter open and there is no start or surprise at being in bed with him, only the sleepy smile spreading across her face and her eyes so deep and so blue and so full of love. "Go back to sleep." He whispers, reaching a hand to tuck away some hair that has fallen across her face.  
"Only if you do." She replies, eyes already closed.

It is that in that moment Patrick realizes he could never be devoted to anyone else.


	19. Four Walls

Those four walls now are the only place that I can breathe out  
And those four walls now are home  
Those four walls now are the only place that I can feel  
Those four walls now are home

Broods 

* * *

"Dr. Turner, this is a little sudden, I admit I'm flattered but I'm already spoken for." Sister Julienne remarks, deadpan, from the other side of her desk.

She can't tell by the look on his face if he's unamused, or that he simply doesn't hear her.

"Do you mind if I…?" She nods towards the small jewellery box he placed on her desk when he anxiously walked in a few minutes earlier. She opens it and is not particularly surprised that it contains an engagement ring - a simple setting for a modest but quality stone. It seems to have been both a lifetime ago and day away since she knew about things like this, diamonds and rings - another life for another woman. She snaps the box shut and returns it to where he placed it. "It's lovely Patrick." She looks at him, trying to read the look across his face where his sits in a chair across from her. "I didn't realise you were seeing anyone." She begins carefully, schooling her features to remain neutral. Clearly something was bothering him, and while she was touched that he thought enough of their relationship to come to her. She was also confused. "It's for Shelagh." He finally says, looking her square in her eye, his voice surprisingly steady. "I'm going to ask Shelagh to marry me."  
"Oh." Oh. She leans back a little in her seat. She doesn't know what to think so she thinks of nothing other than oh. "How…is she?" Sister Julienne finally asks. "Is she taking care of herself?"  
"She's fighting me on that, but yes. She's getting stronger. I'd say she's getting more herself, but we're both learning who that is."  
"Stubborn isn't she?" She smiles at the memories of all those years past when Shelagh was just a young noviciate. "I remember that was one of the hardest adjustments for her. Holding her tongue."  
"On the plus side, it's been nice having someone who can keep up with Tim's barbs." He can't help but smile - she notices his whole body relaxing at the thought of the woman in question.  
"Are they getting along?"  
"Like a barn on fire. Sister - I know it's sudden, except it's not, not really, is it? I've known her for years."  
"You knew Sister Bernadette for years." She corrects, "You've only just met Shelagh."  
"But they're not separate entities. There's all these parts of Shelagh in Sister Bernadette and parts of Sister Bernadette in Shelagh."  
"You and I can argue the essence of man (or in this case, woman) for hours Patrick. That isn't why you're here."  
"I wanted - I wanted to tell you first so you didn't hear it from anyone else. Rumours or the like."  
"Patrick, no one tells me anything anymore. Not since she fell ill." She can't help when her lip curls up at the corner. Like this. No one told her about this.  
"She'll want to tell you herself if she accepts - or even if she doesn't - and I don't want to undermine that. That's not what this is about." He begins to stammer. She can't recall the last time she saw him stammer. Or as happy as he's been over the last few weeks. She rather regrets not asking him about it like she'd meant to earlier, but she'd been so busy, and he'd been so quick to leave after his shifts. "She's afraid of what others will say or think. She's afraid of what you'll think." He's not looking at her, not anymore. Rather he's standing up, pacing her small office, eager to get this off his chest. "So, whatever you have to say - I'd rather you say it now to me."  
"I'm afraid I don't have much to say. You've taken me a little off guard." She pauses. "I do have to ask - did anything happen while…" She doesn't want to have to finish the question. It doesn't matter - not really - at this point.  
"No." He stops moving.  
"No?"  
"Yes?" He looks at her from under his flop of hair, "I fell in love with her. But physically? No." She's starting to get dizzy watching him move back and forth and instead chooses to focus on the cross above her door to focus her eyes on. "I don't know. I don't know how this happened. I don't think either of us do, really. Shelagh says sometimes that it was God's will. I don't - I'm sorry Sister - buy that. But then I think, how else could this happen? One moment, she's Sister Bernadette and the next, she's - my whole world."  
"Why do you want to marry her Patrick?"  
"How could I not?" That's all he says for a minute. He thinks over the countless reasons why, but it comes down to that one question. How could he not want to marry the woman he loved so throughly and so completely?  
"Then ask her, Dr. Turner. You have my blessing, even if you didn't come here for it. I wish you both…nothing but the best of God's wishes."  
"Really?"  
"Really." She smiles at him, picking up the box and holding it out to him. "Go, ask her, and please, let her know how very much we all miss her. How much I miss her."  
"Thank you Sister, I will." He takes the box from her and half-smiles, tucking the box into his bag. "It - means a lot." And with that, he heads out for the night, leaving Sister Julienne to sink back into her chair and offer up a heartfelt prayer to the Lord asking for his blessing on this unexpected but joyous union.

Patrick and Shelagh - she'll have to get used to calling her that now - Shelagh. She could see it - her quiet temperament and compassion hiding a depth of passion towards anything she found worthy of her love and attention - in this case, Patrick and his son. Patrick for his part, could ground her, pull her out of her thoughts and her head and into the world, offering her a level of love and devotion not often seen. Their earlier conversations in the gardens now take on more color and meaning. How long had her dear sister been struggling with this? Her devotion torn between God and the Doctor? It isn't any wonder she had remained distant since her renunciation - her worlds becoming so intertwined and enmeshed.

She adds a second prayer that this would be the act that brings Shelagh back to their fold - healthier and happier then when she left.

* * *

"Dr. Turner? Glad I caught you!"  
"Oh, Nurse Franklin - I was just headed out for the night."  
"Do you mind if I join you? I had something I wanted to talk to you about." She falls in line with him as he makes his way through the halls of the hospital - she's dressed in her blue scrubs and has her gym bag slung across her back.  
"Well I'm in a bit of a hurry but…" He sees the look of determination on her face and gives in. "Care to walk with me?"  
"Thanks." They push through the doors and make it to the outside where the dusky chill is a welcomed sensation from recycled air of Nonnatus Hospital. "How are you?" She asks, her face neutral, eyes dead ahead.  
"Ah, good. Good." Trixie Franklin is never neutral - his heart sinks to his stomach. "Yourself?"  
"Good - great. Took up running - Dr. Crane says she swears by it. Not convinced it's for me, but then again, it's still in the early days."  
"I suppose." He cautiously agrees.  
"The great thing is you get to see so much of the city - so much you don't normally notice, you know?"  
"I guess?"  
"I've taken to running through the park at lunch."  
"Lunch?"  
"Yes, you know, the one a few blocks away - Mile End?"

His heart sinks as he connects her comments. He remembers the sunny Tuesday afternoon Shelagh had convinced him to have lunch with her in the park. She had become so anxious, uneasy every time she left the privacy of their small collection of rooms that he was starting to worry - she would keep to busy streets, off hours, avoiding the area near the hospital for fear of being caught. She couldn't explain it to him, only to say it wasn't that she was embarrassed or ashamed of him, or their relationship - then her words would falter and she would withdraw into herself. So when she invited him to lunch out in public, how could he say no? Even now, having been caught, he can't help but smile at the thought of that threadbare blanket on the grass and of laying in the sun, his head on her lap. He blushes, he can practically feel Shelagh's fingers running through his hair as his head lays in her lap, eyes closed against the bright sun, listening to her talk about something or another. Then there was silence, darkness, and the feel of her gently kissing him. Tender and almost chaste as it was, it was her first act of affection outside the flat. He was so proud of her at that moment. He was so proud to be the one with her.

"So…that was you?" Trixie's words pull him out of his thoughts. "She's left the order for you!"  
"Well no - " He motions to her to take a right at the road. "She left the order. I am, that is, we are an outcome of that." He cheats a look at the other woman after nervously defending himself and Shelagh, but there's nothing but a small smile across the other woman's lips. "Well good for you - dark horses the pair of you." Trixie nudges him with her shoulder. "And good for her. You're both very lucky to have found one another. I only even noticed that day because you both were both so perfectly nauseating. You know, in a good way." He laughs, having often had the same reactions to couples in public. "How is she?"  
"She's good. She's…"  
"Adjusting?"  
"Yeah." He sighs. "It hasn't been easy for her."  
"Or you? It's hard, it's ok." She speaks as if she knows what it's like to have the weight of someone else's world on her shoulders and he wonders about her life outside of Nonnatus. "I'd like to see her - can you tell her that? Or give her my number?"  
"I think she'd like that."  
"I mean it Dr. Turner -"  
"Trixie, while we're talking about my love affair with a former nun, I'm fairly certain you can call me Patrick."  
"Fine, I mean it Patrick." She stops short in the flow of foot traffic, causing him to have to stop and look at her. "Tell her that it's all well and good to go through an existential angst but there are people who miss her, and care about her. So tell her."  
"Why don't you tell her yourself? We're home." He nods towards the block of flats they stand in front of. "She's in a bit of a - well, I think it would be good for her to see a friendly face."  
"You sure?"  
"No. But I think it'll do more good than harm. She's…"  
"I get it." He opens the door and they enter the building together. "I never told you about my father, have I?"  
"No, I don't believe you have."  
"Well, one day. I have a spin class in thirty minutes anyways - I won't stay long."  
"Spin?"  
"It's like…cycling. Indoors. In one spot." She sees the baffled look on his face and laughs as they exit the lift. "Shut up, it's all the rage and the men wear the cutest little -" Before she can finish her thought, the door opens to reveal Shelagh, rushing out.  
"Oh, Patrick - I was just on my…" Her voice suddenly fails.  
"Shelagh - Trixie wanted to ah - " Patrick flounders, focusing so hard on Shelagh and her reaction that he can't fathom a reasonable excuse as to why Trixie Franklin came home with him. He can't quite decipher the look on her face.  
"Trixie wanted to stop by and check up on you." Trixie almost sighs at the hapless man beside her - how he managed to seduce a nun was completely beyond her. "How are you?! You look much recovered from the last time I saw you!" She hugs the slight woman, feeling her body stiffen. "I hope I'm not intruding. Dr. Turner said he was going home and absolutely ambushed him. Were you on your way out?"  
"I was going to pick up Timothy from rehearsals."  
"Oh - I can do that. Stay, catch up with Trixie, she's only a few minutes before -"  
"Before spin, and don't you make fun of it. I was telling Dr. Turner about my spin class - you should join me one day once you're fully recovered. Great cardio."  
"Love you." He whispers, leaning in to kiss her cheek. She'd gone slightly ashen and he hopes he made the right move.  
"Love you too." She smiles - a real smile - and some color returns to her cheeks. He turns to leave, only to have Trixie call out behind him, "What am I? Chopped liver?"  
"Have a good night Trixie." He teases as the elevator door glides shut, leaving the two women alone in the hall.

"Now, don't be cross at him," Trixie begins, leading Shelagh back into the flat. "I really did ambush him - I waited outside of Sister Julienne's office for eight minutes waiting for him to come out so I could casually bump into him."  
"Should I put on some tea?" Shelagh asks, shedding her coat.  
"Not unless you want some. I really do have to go soon. We were all so worried - we heard you were released from St. Ann's and then we heard you'd left Nonnatus house and then that was it." Together they enter the living room and Shelagh feels very defensive without knowing why. "There were all these rumors and sightings and then a few days ago I was jogging in the park on lunch and there you were. There _both_ of you were." Trixie smiles, flopping on the couch gracelessly and entirely at home. "I didn't tell anyone. It's not my place. Contrary to the opinions of one Jenny Lee, I do know how to keep a secret or two. I was just so - happy you were happy. Does that make sense? I know we weren't particularly close - but I always thought… well… it never hurts to have a friend in your corner when you're going through something."  
"No, I suppose it doesn't." Shelagh agrees quietly. "I'm sorry Trixie - it's all…"  
"A bit much. It's a little like leaving the army or something, isn't it? I get it - which is why I'm going to leave now. But I would like to leave you my number, if that's alright? And to let you know I'm off tomorrow with nothing to do but drink tea and go to the cinema and possibly buy a new dress because I feel like all I wear is scrubs and sweats. If you'd like to join me for a portion of it, then I'd very much welcome the company." She rises, shifting her gym bag, "But I'll also understand if you don't. The point is - Sister Bernadette or not, you do have friends and we miss you." Shelagh rises and walks with the other woman who veers to the kitchen, "Almost every parent has one of these." She laughs at the whiteboard on the fridge where she scrawls her mobile number. "Now, I mean it - this is a sincere invitation, and I don't do sincere that often - not my style." She feigns, making her way to the front door. "Regardless of if you call or not, it was very good to see you…" She realizes she's heard Dr. Turner say her name, but she hasn't been given permission, hasn't been properly introduced.  
"Shelagh." The older woman speaks, finally having a moment to get a word in. "And it was very good to see you too Trixie." And then, she leans over and hugs the blonde woman, really hugs her. She means it, she thinks, it was good to see Trixie. She had wanted for so long to 'one of the girls' and now she has the chance and the freedom to act upon it - she just needed to make the choice. "Oh - and don't be mad at Patrick! Otherwise he'll never forgive me and I'll be bumped right down to A&E once more!" And with that, silence falls upon the house as Trixie leaves Shelagh to her own thoughts.

She puts on the kettle in the kitchen, lost in thought. It was bound to happen - her and Patrick were bound to be caught eventually. But is that even the right word? Caught implies they were doing something wrong, or untoward - but the more time she spends with Patrick and Timothy, the more she feels this is absolutely where she's supposed to be and what she's supposed to do. She doesn't have a single doubt - so where is this fear coming from? Trixie didn't seemed at all outraged by the notion, she seemed genuinely pleased for the two of them. She had spent so much time denying her feelings for Patrick and only thinking about being with him in the large, grand scheme of things that she hadn't thought through the realities of the situation - like other people. It wasn't fair to Patrick, or to herself, to keep living life as if she were ashamed, as if they were doing something wrong. She seemed to be living life as Sister Bernadette, but she wasn't Sister Bernadette anymore. She would never be Sister Bernadette again. So now it was time to figure out how Shelagh would live this life and not squander this gift she had been given by God. But how? She had imagined it would be much easier to leave her old persona behind and start fresh as Shelagh - but it wasn't. It was exhausting, making one tiny little choice after another after another after another. It didn't matter if Shelagh made a choice to join Patrick in the park one Tuesday, because she'd then have to make another choice to walk him back to the hospital instead of watch him walk away. She would have to keep making these decisions and the thought of them alone was enough to exhaust her and worry her and… "Shelagh?"

"Patrick!" She turns around, shocked to see him standing in the kitchen. When did he get there, how long had he been standing there - it didn't matter to her. She launches herself into his arms, burying her face against his chest. She loves how much taller he is than her - for all of his gentle nature, there's comfort and strength in his stature. "You alright love? Was it Trixie? I'm so sorry." He wraps an arm around her, using the other to stroke her hair. He loves her hair - being able to see it, touch it, watch her brush it. He knows it's silly but it reminds him that no matter how difficult it was being apart, it was very much worth it. "Talk to me?" He asks, dropping a kiss on her head. He knew it was too much, too soon, to bring Trixie up - but he really did think it would help her - how could he rush her like this? How could-  
"It's nothing." She finally speaks, breaking up his flow of self-flagellation.  
"It's not nothing - we walked in and the kettle had been whistling for a while." There's no sound now. "I had to turn it off."  
"Where's Tim?" Her eyes dart around looking for him.  
"In his room. So, what is this?"  
"Just thinking."  
"Shelagh."  
"Patrick." She smiles, knowing how much he likes the way she says his name. "Just thinking was all."  
"About?"  
"How much I love you." She does. So very much. She turns her face up and brushes her lips over his. Once, twice, three times before it evolves into something deeper, more passionate. Their kisses, once hesitant, have evolved into something more - a promise of what's to come - an outlet for the heaviness and unspoken tension that lays in bed with them at nights as they curl up chastely beside each other and the sleepy passion of waking up tangled in each other. Oh, those mornings spent discovering each other through the heady haze of rest and exhaustion, of eliciting gasps and giggles and arching backs and nails suddenly digging into skin until one of them stops, both their breathing heavy, their eyes gone dark with desire left unfulfilled. "I am leaving my room now!" Tim calls out, and they reluctantly pull apart. Tim had been sufficiently traumatized when he caught them on the couch a few nights ago and he has since taken to announcing his location whenever it got too quiet. For the most part, he was right. "You can come in to the kitchen Tim." She calls out.  
"Yes Tim, we've finished."  
"Patrick - you'll scar the boy."  
"Too late for that Shelagh." Tim replies, entering the kitchen and looking at them suspiciously. "I'm hungry - can we have dinner soon?"  
"Dinner! Yes, I'm sorry - I got so distracted…" Shelagh begins to look around the kitchen, remembering what she was going to do before she got lost in her thoughts.  
"Why don't I pick up dinner?" Patrick begins, placing a hand on her back, calming her down. "Want to help Tim pack for his overnight tomorrow?"  
"I'll pack in the morning!" Tim suggests, "And we can read the next chapter?"  
"Or, I'll pick up dinner and the Turner men can pack and we'll read the next chapter after dinner?"  
"But you don't like going out." Tim responds, eyeing her carefully.  
"Nonsense." She lies, "Besides, this way I can make sure all my chips make it home without being sampled?" She smirks at them as she moves towards the hall.  
"We do it for your own benefit. Making sure they are up to snuff - that's what dad says anyways." Tim offers up, following her into the hall.  
"I see. Well I think I'll take my chances. Maybe I'll even test the snuff of yours this time?" She smiles as she loosely hugs Tim and then places a quick kiss on Patrick's lips, "Be back soon." She leaves, and even though the door closes, she can hear Tim shout out "Don't eat my chips!".

From the other side of the door Patrick steers his son towards his room, "Listen Tim, before we pack, I need your help with something very special…"

* * *

He can hear the door open and then close on the rooftop. He takes one more deep breath, looking out at the London skyline for strength before turning around to face Shelagh. "Hello Patrick." She all but whispers, a nervous smile across her face. "Hello Shelagh." He replies, his face lighting up as he takes in her new appearance. Apparently she had opted to go out with Trixie after all. "Do you like me?" She asks, shy and indicating to her new clothes.  
"I love you." He confesses. This was a new Shelagh - or at least another side of her, more feminine, in a casual dress that flared and flattered and suited her to no end. He wants to tell her why he asked her to meet him here. He wants to tell her how beautiful she looks and how she takes his breath away with or without the afternoon sun and this glorious backdrop. He wants to just take her in his arms. He wants to do or say a lot of things - but all he can do is rummage in his pocket for the small box and holding it out to her. "I ah, we… this is for you. From me and somebody else." He watches as her eyes dart from the box to him and back to the box - curiosity spreading across every feature. She gently takes it from his hand and undoes the blue bow - he obviously wrapped it himself - and despite his dexterous fingers and skills with a scalpel, day to day intricacies like ribbons and clasps eluded him. She loves it even more because of this small detail. She carefully peels back the paper and notices color on the other side. She lets out a little gasp as she sees the words carefully penciled in Tim's print: "Please will you marry my dad?" She looks up at Patrick, watching her with anticipation. She doesn't speak, she can't. She's fairly certain her heart is beating so fast it won't let her breathe, let alone speak. She opens the box and she goes a little weak. This is real. Her love for him and her answer evident on her face and relief washes over him. He takes the ring from the box and gently slides it upon her finger, not letting go of her hand once it's on. He'll never have to let go. The thought hits him like a ton of bricks, but instead of weighing him down, it causes him to float. It's with this thought that he raises her hand and brings his lips to it, placing a tender kiss to the ring, then turning it over to place another kiss upon the thin, white scar upon her palm. "Patrick?" Her voice is low and controlled, a husky tone unlike any he'd heard from her before, "Take me home."

The trip home is a blur of lights and sounds - but inside the car there is nothing but silence. He doesn't remember much about the journey home - his knuckles are white, gripping the steering wheel. Her hands are folded in her lap. The elevator ride up to the flat was the longest he could recall. During the walk down the hall Shelagh is two steps ahead of him, slipping the key into the door and quietly waiting for him to cross the threshold with her. She steps out of her shoes, dropping down two more inches, she places her purse on the side table and then enters the bedroom. He watches her move about in the dusky light, caught up in the domesticity of it all. The ordinariness of two people coming home to make love. He can see her from the doorway, shrugging out of her coat, removing her watch, and finally standing before him, her weight on one leg, the other tucked behind her ankle, a habit he had never noticed before. "Is this alright Patrick?"

He clears his throat, "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

"There's two of us - we should both want this. We should both be alright with this." She gazes at him, her blue eyes almost navy with desire. This is a new Shelagh - one he's seen flashes of her when he's least expected it. Across the dinner table, stepping out of the shower, first thing in the morning when they're both half asleep and half awake. "We've avoided talking about this, but Patrick, I'm sorry - I've been thinking about it for a very long time. I know we should wait until we're married, but Patrick…"  
"I don't think I can share a bed with you for that much longer and not, Shelagh."  
"Oh Patrick. I don't think I can either. Sometimes I worry you fell in love with Sister Bernadette, but are here with…well me."  
"You, Shelagh, is exactly who I want to be here with. I know it's selfish, but forgive me, I want more. I want it all with you, Shelagh. I want to marry you and love you and be with you and hold you. I want you." He's still in the hall, on the other side of the doorway from her. "I've wanted this for, well, I'm embarrassed to say how long. It's just… it's been a while, and I want…I want to…I want you to enjoy yourself…" He doesn't know what he's trying to say.  
"Patrick, you're talking to a woman who spent the last 10 years as a nun, as long as we're together, I'm sure we'll muddle through." She smiles at him one of her biggest, brightest smiles, the one that makes him suspect that she's part divine. "Now, would you help unzip me?" She slowly turns around and collects her honey coloured hair to allow him access to the zipper of her new dress - and with that he's lost to her. He steps forward and places a hand on her hip and a kiss at the nape, where the pinkish dress meets her fair skin. Her breath hitches as his free hand drags the zipper down. She sways back against him, a jolt of electricity passing between their bodies before she guides them to his bed.

Their bed.

The soft and incomplete sounds of their coming undone against each other, with each other, for and because of each other echo through the flat. At first there was nothing...then nothing turned itself inside-out and became something.

The end.


End file.
